Life is full of passwords. We use them every day to shop online and to access email, social media and University systems. Passwords prove who you are and help stop identity theft, fraud and confidential information falling into the wrong hands.

Using strong passwords, or passphrases, is an essential part of protecting your online accounts. A strong password is unique, long and hard to guess.

Instructional video

Instructional guide

• Be at least 13 characters long.
• Contain at least 4 random words.
• Contain an upper-case letter, lower-case letter, number, and a special character (excluding £ and € as some systems do not recognise these characters).
• Not contain the words ‘University’ or ‘Lincoln’ (even if you use a common substitution like ‘@’ instead of ‘a’ or ‘1’ instead of ‘l’).
• Not be based on personal information, user ID, names of family, children or pets.

Strong Password Definition

In some instances, even stronger passwords are required. Strong passwords MUST have the following characteristics:

• It is at least 16 characters long.
• It includes upper and lower case letters (e.g. a–z, A–Z); digits (0-9) and other characters (punctuation): ! @ # $ % ^ & * ( ) _ + | ~ – = ` { } [ ] : ” ; ’ < > ? , . / )
• It is not a word in any language, slang, dialect, or jargon.
• It is not based on personal information, user ID, names of family, children or pets.
• It must be changed every six months for interactive accounts (that are typed during Sign-In) and every year for non-interactive accounts.
• When a password is changed a previous password can never be reused.
• More than three attempts at entering a strong password will result in the account being set unusable (locked out) until an administrator has unlocked the account.

Note: you can also use a strong password where only a normal password is required.

Password examples

To create a long password that is not hard to remember but is highly secure we recommend stringing together at least 4 random unrelated words along with some substitutions to meet the number and special character requirement – e.g. “Tworedpendog7!”

Alternatively, you could use the first initial of each word within a 10-word or greater phrase – e.g. “The two planets, Earth and Mars are both bigger than the Moon” would be “T2pEaMaBbttM!”

There are many online tools, such as Strong Password Generator, that can assist in helping you to create a strong password.

Additional guidance:

• Action Fraud
• Get safe online
• UK Safer Internet Centre
• Take Five
• UK Government
• UKCISA