Strong Passwords for Students

Loudoun County Public Schools adopted a new information security policy this year. One of the most significant changes in this policy is the required use of strong passwords for students and staff. While strong password requirements have been in place for LCPS staff, this is an important change for our students in grades 2-12. A strong student password is the best defense for protecting data and student privacy.

LCPS strong passwords have the following characteristics:

  • Contain both upper and lower case alpha characters 

  • Have digits, punctuation and special characters 

  • It contains at least eight characters, including alpha, numeric and special characters.

 An example is L@p$R0@k$! This may also be called a “passphrase” – LCPS Rocks, for example.

LCPSGO is a single sign on tool that allows your student to log in once to access most of their files and applications. This also means that one password is the key to the data kingdom. Please work with your students to ensure they create a strong password or passphrase.

Common Sense Media Resources for Parents

There are a number of excellent resources that are grade-level or age appropriate for you to help navigate student privacy issues. View this Common Sense article to reinforce some good rules for screen names and passwords with your student.

Goals for the future

Implementation of strong passwords and the use of passphrases is an important step in helping keep student data safe, but we know that as technologies change and adapt. LCPS is committed to evaluating and implementing new technologies and data security techniques that can help us keep our students’ data safe and secure. In the future, this may include QR codes, Multi Factor Authentication tokens, and whatever may be coming on the horizon for K12 security.