Information Technology Services - Service Desk

New Self Serve Account Portal Available for all Staff and Students

Information Technology Services has launched a new self service account portal.  It is located at: https://passwordreset.algomau.ca/

This portal will allow you to change your password whenever you want to from any internet connected device.  In a addition, if you enrol your account and enter a collection of security questions, you can reset a forgotten password without needing to contact the service desk.  We would encourage all staff and students to enrol and set their security questions.

To enhance our security and to minimize the risk of accounts getting compromised, we are switching our password expiry policy to 6 months.  This means you will need to change your password twice a year.

Current security best practices favour length over complex passwords.  For this reason we recommend using passphrases.  For instance, your password may be

“I love the snow in Ontario.” or ; “AlgomaU has the best students!”

Something that is easy to remember. You can include spaces and punctuation if you want.  We will be encouraging passphrase use by changing the minimum number of characters for your password to be twelve (12).

Another best practice is to *NEVER* use the same password on two systems.  For instance, you wouldn’t want to use the same password for your AlgomaU account as you amazon.ca account.  If amazon.ca’s password database was ever compromised, they could use that password to log into your AlgomaU account.  This may mean you will now have more passwords to remember, which can be cumbersome. 

It’s for that reason that the AlgomaU IT dept recommends using a password manager.  There are many out there, and use one that fits your needs.  One that we are fond of is KeyPass. ( https://keepass.info/ )

If you have any questions or comments submit an IT Incident and we’ll reply as soon as we are able.