M³AAWG is a trade association that brings together ISPs, hosting providers, bulk mailers, and a lot of infrastructure vendors to discuss messaging abuse, malware, and mobile abuse. (Those comprise the M³.) One of the things they do is publish best practice documents for network and mail operators, including two recently published, one on Password Recommendations for Account Providers, and another on Password Managers Usage Recommendations. Since I’m one of M³‘s senior technical advisers, I helped write them, but I think they’re pretty good anyway.

Rather than just regurgitate the usual unworkable advice (make each password 14 different random characters, change them every week, and never write them down) we tried to look at the real threats on the current Internet and offer advice that makes sense today. The password advice does recommend strong passwords or pass phrases, but then mostly talks about operational issues: do encrypt channels where passwords are sent via HTTPS or the like, do use multiple factors where possible, do use federated authentication to minimize the number of passwords people have to use, do make users change default passwords before using a new account, and don’t do hard account lockouts after password failures (an easy way to harass your enemies.) While it does say to make it easy for users to change passwords when they want, it doesn’t recommend required password changes, since that is counterproductive—people use a pattern like password1, password2, password3, write them down, or most likely both.

The whole document is 8 pages long, so it’s worth downloading to read the whole thing.

The password recommendations also encourage people to use password managers, the topic of the second document. A good password manager makes good password discipline much easier, since it can remember different totally random passwords for every account, and won’t forget them. Many of them can keep the list of passwords in sync between a laptop and phones and tablets, a boon for whose of us with aging memories. This paper is only three pages, short enough to download and print out and send around to people who don’t understand why they’re a good idea.

There are lots more best practice documents on the M³AAWG web site. I’ll blog about some of the others in the future.