Password Policy
The Ciphertrust Manager provides one universal password policy for all users across all domains. This policy is known as the global policy and is applied to all users by default. However, the Ciphertrust Manager also facilitates you to create custom password policies for new or existing users. These policies can be assigned to the selected users based on the requirement.
Note
The global policy cannot be deleted.
The global policy is managed only by the members of the
adminanduser admingroups.
You can create/configure the password policies using the API playground or CLI.
Allowed password length and characters
These are the password policy settings that define the allowed password length and characters:
Default: Minimum length: 8
Default: Maximum length: 30
Default: Minimum number of upper cases: 1
Default: Minimum number of lower cases: 1
Default: Minimum number of digits: 1
Default: Minimum number of other characters: 1
To set the entire password policy
You can set the entire password policy. See the "CLI Documentation" for details on each parameter.
-f, --failed-logins-lockout-thresholds list of lockout durations in minutes for failed login attempts.
-L, --lifetime maximum lifetime of the user password.
-b, --history number of past passwords saved. This sets how frequently old passwords can be reused.
-t, --minlength minimum length of the password.
-z, --maxlength maximum length of the password.
-m, --minupper minimum number of upper case letters.
-w, --minlower minimum number of lower case letters.
-d, --mindig minimum number of digits.
-o, --minother minimum number of other characters.
--pwdchngdays maximum lifetime of the password in days.
To set the allowed password length and characters in one string:
ksctl users pwdpolicy update --minlength 8 --maxlength 30 --minupper 1 --minlower 1 --minother 1 --mindig 1
To update a single aspect of the password policy
ksctl users pwdpolicy update --maxlength 100
Changing Password Expiration
User passwords can be set to expire after the configured number of days from the last password change.
Default: Password lifetime: 0 (password never expires)
To set password to expire in 30 days
-L, --lifetime maximum lifetime of the user password.
ksctl users pwdpolicy update --lifetime 30
To set password to never expire:
ksctl users pwdpolicy update --lifetime 0
Changing user account lockout thresholds
User's account can be temporarily locked out for a specified duration after a specified number of user authentication failure attempts. A lockout is applicable only for users in a local account, i.e. not valid for LDAP users.
Default: disabled (no lockout)
To set the user account lockout thresholds
-f, --failed-logins-lockout-thresholds List of lockout durations in minutes for failed login attempts.
In this example, values [0, 5, 30] means that the first failed login attempt, with lockout duration of zero, will not lockout the user account. The second failed login attempt will lockout the account for 5 minutes. The third and subsequent failed login attempts will lockout for 30 minutes.
ksctl users pwdpolicy update -f [0, 5, 30]
Note
If you set these thresholds while a user is locked out, the active lockout period must complete before the new thresholds are applied to that user's authentication attempts.
To disable user account lockout
To disable user account lockout, set an empty array '[]'.
ksctl users pwdpolicy update -f []
Unlocking a user account
A user account that has been locked due to failed log in attempts can be unlocked by an Application Administrator.
To unlock a user account
ksctl users modify --id "local|c9161a90-0838-469b-87e9-726d8c539f3f" -u
Changing the password history
The CipherTrust Manager retains the user's password history to prevent users from reusing their passwords.
Default: Password History: 5.
The minimum value for history is '0'. This value prevents the users from reusing their current password.
With the default value of 5, the user is prevented from reusing their current password and 4 previous passwords.
The maximum value for password history is 20.
-b, --history number of past passwords saved. This sets how frequently old passwords can be reused
To set the password history to the value 7, issue this command:
ksctl users pwdpolicy update --history 7
Custom password policies
The Ciphertrust Manager allows creating multiple password policies for the users. These custom password policies can be explicitly assigned to users using the password_policy field while creating or updating the user details.
password_policy: "custom_policy <Name of the custom policy>"
Note
The custom password policies can be managed and applied only by the members of the admin and user admin groups.
Example Request 1 (creating a user with custom password policy)
ksctl users create --username "testuser1" --password-policy custom_policy --pword "pass@A123"
Example Response
{
"created_at": "2023-02-21T04:48:40.447587Z",
"email": "testuser1@local",
"last_login": null,
"logins_count": 0,
"name": "testuser1",
"nickname": "testuser1",
"updated_at": "2023-02-21T04:48:40.447587Z",
"user_id": "local|d943506b-d3f9-4774-b5c3-c812c2eb4b9c",
"username": "testuser1",
"failed_logins_count": 0,
"account_lockout_at": null,
"failed_logins_initial_attempt_at": null,
"last_failed_login_at": null,
"password_changed_at": "2023-02-21T04:48:40.432542Z",
"password_change_required": false,
"certificate_subject_dn": "",
"enable_cert_auth": false,
"auth_domain": "00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000",
"login_flags": {
"prevent_ui_login": false
},
"allowed_auth_methods": [
"password"
],
"allowed_client_types": [
"unregistered",
"public",
"confidential"
],
"password_policy": "custom_policy"
}
Example Request 2 (assigning custom password policy to an existing user)
ksctl users modify --id "local|d943506b-d3f9-4774-b5c3-c812c2eb4b9c" --password-policy test_policy --pword "Pass@A123"
Example Response
{
"created_at": "2023-02-21T04:48:40.447587Z",
"email": "testuser1@local",
"last_login": null,
"logins_count": 0,
"name": "testuser1",
"nickname": "testuser1",
"updated_at": "2023-02-21T05:05:50.564412Z",
"user_id": "local|d943506b-d3f9-4774-b5c3-c812c2eb4b9c",
"username": "testuser1",
"failed_logins_count": 0,
"account_lockout_at": null,
"failed_logins_initial_attempt_at": null,
"last_failed_login_at": null,
"password_changed_at": "2023-02-21T05:05:50.562118Z",
"password_change_required": false,
"certificate_subject_dn": "",
"enable_cert_auth": false,
"login_flags": {
"prevent_ui_login": false
},
"allowed_auth_methods": [
"password"
],
"allowed_client_types": [
"unregistered",
"public",
"confidential"
],
"password_policy": "test_policy"
}
To know the default values for custom password policies, refer to allowed password length and characters.
Managing custom password policies
The following operations can be performed:
Create/Get/Change/Delete custom password policies
List all password policies
For parameters details, refer to To set the entire password policy.
Creating custom password policies
To create a custom password policy, run:
Example Request
ksctl users pwdpolicy create --policy-name "custom_policy" --minupper 1 --minlower 1 --mindig 1 --minother 0 --minlength 8 --maxlength 30 --lifetime 30 --failed-logins-lockout-thresholds "[0,0,30]" --history 0 --pwdchngdays 1
Example Response
{
"inclusive_min_upper_case": 1,
"inclusive_min_lower_case": 1,
"inclusive_min_digits": 1,
"inclusive_min_other": 0,
"inclusive_min_total_length": 8,
"inclusive_max_total_length": 30,
"password_history_threshold": 0,
"failed_logins_lockout_thresholds": [
0,
0,
30
],
"password_lifetime": 30,
"policy_name": "custom_policy",
"password_change_min_days": 1
}
Getting details of custom password policies
To get details of a custom password policy, run:
Example Request 1 (with policy name)
ksctl users pwdpolicy get --policy-name custom_policy
Example Response
{
"inclusive_min_upper_case": 1,
"inclusive_min_lower_case": 1,
"inclusive_min_digits": 1,
"inclusive_min_other": 0,
"inclusive_min_total_length": 8,
"inclusive_max_total_length": 30,
"password_history_threshold": 0,
"failed_logins_lockout_thresholds": [
0,
0,
30
],
"password_lifetime": 30,
"policy_name": "custom_policy",
"password_change_min_days": 1
}
If the policy name is not specified in the request, then the applied password policy is fetched. By default, the global password policy is applied to the users.
Example Request 2 (without policy name)
ksctl users pwdpolicy get
Example Response
{
"inclusive_min_upper_case": 1,
"inclusive_min_lower_case": 1,
"inclusive_min_digits": 1,
"inclusive_min_other": 0,
"inclusive_min_total_length": 8,
"inclusive_max_total_length": 30,
"password_history_threshold": 0,
"failed_logins_lockout_thresholds": [
0,
0,
30
],
"password_lifetime": 30,
"policy_name": "custom_policy",
"password_change_min_days": 1
}
Changing custom password policies
To change a custom password policy, run:
Example Request
ksctl users pwdpolicy update --policy-name "custom_policy" --minupper 2 --minlower 2 --mindig 2 --minother 2 --minlength 20 --maxlength 20 --lifetime 0 --failed-logins-lockout-thresholds "[0,5,30]" --history 10 --pwdchngdays 30
Example Response
{
"inclusive_min_upper_case": 2,
"inclusive_min_lower_case": 2,
"inclusive_min_digits": 2,
"inclusive_min_other": 2,
"inclusive_min_total_length": 20,
"inclusive_max_total_length": 20,
"password_history_threshold": 10,
"failed_logins_lockout_thresholds": [
0,
5,
30
],
"password_lifetime": 0,
"policy_name": "custom_policy",
"password_change_min_days": 30
}
Deleting custom password policies
To delete a custom password policy, run:
Example Request
ksctl users pwdpolicy delete --policy-name custom_policy
There will be no response if policy is deleted successfully.
Getting list of all password policies
To list all the password policies, run:
Example Request
ksctl users pwdpolicy list
Example Response
{
"skip": 0,
"limit": 10,
"total": 2,
"resources": [
{
"inclusive_min_upper_case": 1,
"inclusive_min_lower_case": 1,
"inclusive_min_digits": 1,
"inclusive_min_other": 0,
"inclusive_min_total_length": 8,
"inclusive_max_total_length": 30,
"password_history_threshold": 0,
"failed_logins_lockout_thresholds": [
0,
0,
30
],
"password_lifetime": 30,
"policy_name": "custom_policy",
"password_change_min_days": 1
},
{
"inclusive_min_upper_case": 1,
"inclusive_min_lower_case": 1,
"inclusive_min_digits": 1,
"inclusive_min_other": 1,
"inclusive_min_total_length": 8,
"inclusive_max_total_length": 30,
"password_history_threshold": 5,
"failed_logins_lockout_thresholds": [
0,
0,
0,
0,
1
],
"password_lifetime": 0,
"policy_name": "global",
"password_change_min_days": 0
}
]
}
