In order to comply with the UH Manual of Administrative Policies and Procedures (MAPP), changes will be coming to the mail.uh.edu email service. These changes are necessary to ensure that account passwords will be changed every 90 days and to comply with UH Strong Password standards.

The first phase of the project is to ensure that mail.uh.edu passwords expire every 90 days. Starting on Friday November 20, 2009, all current passwords on the mail.uh.edu email system will expire in 90 days. This means that if no action is taken by mail.uh.edu email account owners, their mail.uh.edu email password will expire on Thursday February 18, 2010 and MUST be changed at that time. All mail.uh.edu email passwords changed after November 20, 2009 will expire 90 days after the day the password was changed.

The second phase of the project is to enable complex passwords on the mail.uh.edu email system. Starting on Friday December 4, 2009, all changed/reset mail.uh.edu email passwords must comply with the UH Strong Password standards. A Strong Password consists of the following:

1. Minimum Password Length: 8 characters
2. Expire passwords every 90 days and prevent their reuse for a year
3. Passwords must contain at least one character from each of the following classes:
a. Alphabetic: Upper or lower case (a-z, A-Z)
b. Numeric: 0-9
c. Special Characters: ! # % & ( ) * @ ^
4. Lockout: After 5 consecutive failed login attempts an account will be locked for 30 minutes.

Passwords for mail.uh.edu email accounts can be changed on the http://mail.uh.edu/ website or by using the Password Reset web site, which already adheres to the strong password requirements.

If you have any additional questions about the upcoming mail.uh.edu email account password changes, please contact the IT Support Center at 713-743-1411, or via email at support@uh.edu .