Easy to guess passwords are the Achilles heel of all phone systems. Vertical TeleVantage combats this by offering the administrator the ability to enforce the use of strong passwords for system users. Other options, such as lockout and password expiration make the job of guessing a password much harder.
Requiring Password Complexity
Options for strong passwords include minimum password length, prevent passwords that contain the account’s extension, and a list item entitled ‘Prevent passwords from the following list’. This final option includes a long group of strings such as ‘000’, ‘123’ etc built in, and also allows the administrator to add to, edit, and delete entries from this list.
Passwords Automatically Expire Option
An option to expire passwords after x amount of days is available as a global setting. This option can be overridden for users on an individual basis. Additionally, the user’s properties screen in TeleVantage Administrator has a ‘user must change password on next logon’ option, which allows the forced expiration at any time.
Account Lockout Options
TeleVantage has an “Automatically lock out accounts after X failed logon attempts” option. After the threshold for failed attempts is exceeded, the user may not log in until the account is unlocked. The option to have this account unlocked after X minutes is available, or alternately, the user must wait for an Administrator unlocks the account.
Hang Up On Failed Login Attempts
After an account is locked, the TeleVantage system can be configured to hang up on a caller who fails to log in after X attempts.
Tools>System Security
TeleVantage has a scanning tool built in that looks for common weaknesses in the system. Running Tools>System Security will create a report of users with weak or default passwords. By clicking on individual items in the report, the administrator can address these vulnerable accounts directly.