DoD password policy requirements

What is the DoD?

The Department of Defense (DoD) is the United States federal agency responsible for national security and managing the armed forces. Given the sensitive and critical nature of its operations, the DoD enforces stringent policies to protect its information systems and data from unauthorized access. Compliance with these policies is mandatory for DoD personnel, contractors, and affiliated organizations to ensure the integrity, confidentiality, and availability of defense-related information.

What are the DoD password requirements

The following table explains the password policy requirements of the DoD and how ADSelfService Plus helps your organization comply with them.

Simplify DoD compliance using ADselfService Plus

ADSelfService Plus' Password Policy Enforcer satisfies DoD requirements and can be enforced for all or specific AD users based on their domain, OU, or group membership. With its adaptive MFA techniques, ADSelfService Plus ensures your organizational identities are effectively secured for a comprehensive Zero Trust environment.

1. Enforce minimum password length: Mandate passwords of at least 15 characters for systems without MFA, as required by the DoD.
2. Ensure password complexity: Require passwords to include uppercase, lowercase, numeric, and special characters, fully meeting DoD standards for complexity.
3. Ban weak and compromised passwords: Block the use of leaked, weak, or easily guessable passwords, including dictionary words, repetitive or sequential characters, and palindromes, to reduce the risk of credential-based attacks.
4. Mandate MFA for users: Secure user access to sensitive defense-related data by enabling adaptive MFA for endpoints, such as for machine logons, application logons, VPN logons, RDP logons, and OWA logons. Choose from a range of 20 different MFA authenticators, including FIDO passkeys and biometrics, to verify users' identities, helping organizations satisfy DoD recommendations for strong authentication even though MFA is not yet mandated.
5. Enforce password history: Ensure password strength by enforcing password history during native password resets in the Windows Active Directory Users and Computers (ADUC) console.

 

 

Restrict users from reusing any of their previously used passwords during password creation.

 

 

Configure the minimum password length and the inclusion of alpha-numeric characters in passwords.

 

 

Choose the minimum number of complexity requirements your users' passwords should satisfy as per your organization's security needs.

 

 

Choose from a plethora of different authenticators to verify your users' identities.

 

 

Secure all endpoints in your network using MFA.

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