Nowadays one of the most important issues that we must keep in mind in any organization or in our daily life is security, which must be present in the equipment either at the operating system or hardware level to always have a stable system., available and complete. You must always keep these passwords safe to avoid losing them or for someone to know them.
Although Windows 10 is one of the safest Operating Systems developed by Microsoft, it is important that as users or administrators we take restrictive measures in this regard.
Featured features of Windows 10
Some of the security features highlighted in Windows 10 are:
- Windows Defender, which protects the system against viruses, spyware and malware.
- Biometric authentication when using Windows Hello to further personalize our experience.
- Parental control, which prevents the smallest of the household from accessing improper pages or executing unauthorized actions on the equipment.
- Windows SmartScreen, which prevents phishing by performing trust analysis of the pages preventing applications from that source from being installed.
- Microsoft Edge which has been developed to be one of the company's safest browsers.
Even with these great security developments, we can be exposed to failures in the security of our system and one of the strategic points has to do with the users who access the system. Although a user is free to modify his password at the time he wishes, we can create certain policies so that in a certain period of time the system requires its modification.
Security tips to create passwords
It is important that as users we have the following principles for the assignment of a password:
- Prevent the password from containing basic user information such as birthday, identity document, telephone number, etc.
- The minimum recommended length is 8 characters combined between numbers, symbols, upper and lower case.
- Avoid dictionary words as they are prone to be discovered by the tools developed for this purpose.
- Avoid using the "Save password" option .
Secure Passwords
With this in mind we will analyze the options offered by Windows 10 to request the password change .
1. Force change user password using Command Prompt Windows 10
Step 1
For this we must execute the command prompt as administrators ( Right click / Run as administrator ) and in the deployed console we will enter the following command:
wmic UserAccount set PasswordExpires = True
Step 2
This command allows the users password to expire and requires change . We can see that the system automatically updates the properties of each of the active users in the system.
Step 3
Now we must enter the following command to indicate the number of days in which the password will be valid before requesting the change, for example, so that the password is active for 60 days and then requires change we will enter the following:
net accounts / maxpwage: 60
Step 4
To validate that the number of days in which the user's password will be valid will be established correctly, we will use the following command. The result will be as follows. We can verify that in the line Duration max. Password (days) is the value 60.
net accounts
Step 5
This process applies to all users of the system, but if we need the policy to apply to a particular user we will use the following syntax. Here we must replace User with the name of the Windows 10 user .
wmic UserAccount where Name = "User" set PasswordExpires = True
2. Force password change using GPO Group Policies in Windows 10
Step 1
The next option available to force the change of a password in Windows 10 is using the Windows 10 group policies, for this we will do the following process. We access the Execute command and enter the following term there:
gpedit.msc
Note
This process can be used in the Enterprise and Professional editions of Windows 10 but not in the Home edition.
Step 2
When executing this command we will go to the following route:
- Equipment configuration
- Windows settings
- Security settings
- Account Policies
- Password Directive
Step 3
There we will select the policy called Maximum password validity and double click on it or right click / Modify and we will see the following.
Step 4
We see that by default the value is zero 0 which means that the password never expires. In the box we enter the number of days in which the password must be modified.
Step 5
Click on Apply and then OK to save the changes and we can exit the group policy editor. With this method after the indicated days the user must modify the password. Note that we can set additional parameters to passwords from the editor such as:
- Minimum length
- Complexity requirements
- Password history, etc.
3. Force password change using email account in Windows 10
The other option with which we have for this process is directly from our email account, Outlook or Hotmail, to adjust the time in which the password change request will be required.
Step 1
For this we access our email account and go to the Security and privacy tab .
Step 2
There we select the Change password option and we will see the following window.
Step 3
There we set the new password and check the box Make me change the password every 72 days so that at the end of this period of time it is mandatory to change the password. Click Next to complete the process. This option applies when we enter the system using our email account and not a local account.
Using any of these methods we will take another step in the security of our Windows 10 systems since the fundamental part is the users since they are the ones who manage every day of the Operating System activities.
Let us keep these tips in mind and daily seek to increase and improve security on all the equipment we manage or own. If you want to know more about passwords and security, we suggest how to reset or change password in Windows 10, 8 and 7.
Change password W10
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