Southern's authentication supports both password and passphrase. All password/passphrase for university services must abide by minimum complexity requirements listed below:

• The password/passphrase cannot contain the user's account name or parts of the user's full name that exceed two consecutive characters.
• The password/passphrase length must be 8 or greater. 
• Contain characters from at least three of the following four categories:
  • English uppercase alphabet characters (A-Z).
  • English lowercase alphabet characters (a-z)
  • Base 10 digit (0-9).
  • Non-alphanumeric characters (!@#$%^&*()_-+=|~`][;"'<,>.?/ and space)

Your password/passphrase expires every 180 days. Your can only reuse your old password/passphrase after 10 resets.

Creating Your Security Profile

When you log into MySCSU the very first time, you will be prompted to set up your password security profile by answering a set of security questions. The profile will be used to verify your identity during the password reset process. You may modify your security profile at any time by logging into MySCSU and select "My Account" at the upper right-hand corner.

Resetting Password/Passphrase

You may reset your network ID password/passphrase at any time by filling out the password reset form. The reset will take effect immediately.

Tips on Creating Strong Password/Passphrase

Strong password/passphrase is important to keep your online transaction safe and secure. The key to password/passphrase strength is lengthen and complexity. An ideal password/passphrase is long and has letters, punctuation, symbols, and numbers. Good practices include:

• Whenever possible, use 14 characters or more for password. Passphrase should be at least 4 words long, preferrablely 6.
• The greater the variety of characters in password/passphrase the better. Use the entire keyboard, not just the letters and characters you use or see most often.
• The word/phrase need not be intelligible. Randomly generated passwords have greatest strength and are most difficult to crack.
• For passphrase, you can include some spaces, but exclude others, to increase the strength.
• For passphrase, the words should not be short. Short words can be cracked very efficiently with standard password crackers.
• For password, avoid using dictionary words, number/alphabet sequences, repeated characters, adjacent letters on the keyboard, name, birthday, driver's license, passport number, or similar information.