Observatory Account Policy

An account on the Institute Lorentz Computer system is part of your rights whilst appointed at a University Position, External Position out-sourced at the Institute Lorentz or during your education period as a Bachelor or Master.

To obtain an account you will first have to register as a member of the Institute Lorentz crowd. This can be done by visiting our secretaries at room 251 (Oort Building).

Once they have entered your coordinates into the Persons Database, you can visit the Computer group, located at BM 4.20 (Gorlaeus Building) to have your account enabled. Your account will be your personal responsibility during your stay at the Institute.

It is possible to obtain accounts that are not on a personal title, but are necessary for meetings or projects. The Institute will only make available such an account when the technical necessity has been clearly proven to the computer group.

Account are your personal responsibility, but using them has impact on the total security of the Leiden Observatory Computing system. You are therefore required to:

• Don't write down or let others know your password
• Change your password the first time you use a new account
• Passwords must be at least 8 characters in length and should include numbers, special characters, and contain a mix of lower case and upper case characters.
• Do not use common names, words, or astronomical terms for passwords.
• Do not store passwords in files, function keys, or command files.
• Passwords must be changed regularly; the system enforces password expiration after 1 year, but more regular changes may be better. You will be notified a couple of weeks in advance when your password is about to expire.
• Watch for system alerts to login failures; if you cannot account for the failures, notify the system manager.
• Accounts may not be shared.
• Computer games are not supported and the system manager may remove them in search for disk space.

The computer group will regularly test the user password for simplicity, meaning easy to guess passwords. Once your password has been cracked you will be informed by email and your account will be closed within a week if the easily guessasble password has not been changed by then.

Because the Instutute is part of the University computing environment, the University gedragsregels are also in operation.