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Account Policies and Password Expiration

For enhanced security, you might want to implement the following account policies. Account policies are functions of your authentication service. If you want to implement account policies, then you are responsible for setting them up through administration features provided by the authentication service vendor.

• Password syntax rules, such as minimum password length.

  When creating or changing passwords, minimum length requirements and other syntax rules defined in the external directory are enforced by the Siebel application.

• An account lockout after a specified number of failed attempts to log in.

  Account lockout protects against password guessing attacks. Siebel Business Applications support lockout conditions for accounts that have been disabled by the external directory.

• Password expiration after a specified period of time.

  The external directory can be configured to expire passwords and warn users that passwords are about to expire. Password expiration warnings issued by the external directory are recognized by Siebel Business Applications and users are notified to change their passwords.

About Password Expiration

Password expiration can be implemented in the following authentication strategies:

• Security adapter authentication: LDAP, ADSI, or applicable custom security adapter
• Database authentication where supported by the RDBMS

If you are using an LDAP or ADSI security adapter, then password expiration is handled by the external LDAP directory or Active Directory, and is subject to the configuration of this behavior for the third-party directory product.

For example, when a password is about to expire, the directory might provide warning messages to the Siebel application to display when the user logs in. Such a warning would indicate the user's password is about to expire and must be changed. If the user ignores such warnings and allows the password to expire, then the user might be required to change the password before logging into the application. Or, the user might be locked out of the application once the password has expired.

Password expiration configuration steps for each directory vendor will vary. For more information, see the documentation provided with your directory product. More information about password expiration for use with Active Directory is provided below.

Password Expiration on Active Directory

On Active Directory, factors that affect the password state include the following attributes and parameters:

• Password Never Expires (attribute for user object)
• User Must Change Password At Next Logon (attribute for user object)
• Last Time User Set Password (attribute for user object)
• Maximum Password Age (attribute for domain)
• Password Expire Warn Days (parameter for ADSI security adapter)

When you configure password expiration for Active Directory, you add the parameter Password Expire Warn Days (alias PasswordExpireWarnDays) to the ADSI security adapter. Set the value to the number of days you want to provide a warning message before a user's password expires.

NOTE:  The attributes Password Never Expires and User Must Change Password at Next Logon are mutually exclusive, and cannot both be checked for a user.

The state of each user's password is determined by the following logic:

• If Password Never Expires is checked for a user, then this user never gets a password expired error, regardless of the settings of other attributes.
• If User Must Change Password At Next Logon is checked for a user, then this user gets a password expired error, regardless of the settings of other attributes.
• If neither of the above attributes are checked for a user, then the following behavior applies:
  • If Maximum Password Age is set to 0 for the domain, then a user will not get a password- expired error. No password will expire in the domain.
  • If a value is specified for Maximum Password Age, then the following behavior applies:
    • If the difference between the current time and the last time a user has set the password (the value of the Last Time User Set Password attribute for the user) is larger than the value of Maximum Password Age, then this user gets a password-expired error.
    • If the difference between current time and the last time a user has set the password is smaller than Password Expire Warn Days (set for the ADSI security adapter), then this user gets a password-expiring warning message.
    • If the difference between current time and the last time a user has set the password is smaller than Maximum Password Age, and larger than Password Expire Warn Days, then this user will log in successfully and will not get any error or warning message.

NOTE:  Confirm all third-party directory product behavior and configuration with your third-party documentation.