Skip to main content

Patterns Rule

The Patterns rule rejects passwords that contain character patterns such as "abcde". Character patterns weaken the password.

  • Enable the Patterns button to enable the Patterns rule.

  • Reject character patterns like "abcde" – Enable this button to check for character patterns.

    • Detect character substitution – Select this checkbox if Password Policy Enforcer should reject passwords that rely on character substitution to comply with this rule.
    • Detect words typed backwards – Select this checkbox if Password Policy Enforcer should additionally test passwords with their characters reversed. Enabling this analysis stops users from circumventing this rule by reversing the order of characters in their password. For example, a user may enter "edcba" instead of "abcde".
    • Tolerance – Choose a value from the dropdown list to specify the longest pattern that Password Policy Enforcer allows before rejecting a password. For example, the password "password wxyz" contains a four-character pattern (shown in bold type). Password Policy Enforcer rejects this password if the tolerance is set to three (or lower), and accept it if the tolerance is set to four (or higher).

  • Character patterns – Click the Character Patterns button to set the patterns to apply. Default is both English alphabet (a-z) and Numbers (0-9).

  • Enable the Reject keyboard patterns like "qwerty" button to enable check for keyboard patterns.

    • Detect <_keyboard type_> keyboard patterns – Select keyboard layouts to set the keyboard type, Horizontal, Vertical, or Horizontal and Vertical.
    • Detect direction change – Select this checkbox for entries that change direction. For example, qweewq.
    • Detect key repeat – Select the checkbox for repeated keys, based on the Tolerance value. If Tolerance is 4, aaaa is accepted and aaaaa is rejected.
    • Detect key skip – Select this checkbox for skipped keys, such as qetuo.
    • Tolerance – Set tolerance for the number of characters in a keyboard pattern is allowed before the password is rejected.