For data security purposes and HIPAA requirements, Denticon requires each user to change the password every year.
NOTE: In its operating protocol, the dental office may require that users change the password more often.
Per Denticon’s “April 26, 2012 Build Release Notes” which may be accessed via the word “Help” and choosing the “Release Notes” option from the drop-down box:
With this release, we have added several features that help you better maintain and tighten the security of your Denticon system, especially for larger organizations that have several hundred users. Some of these changes may seem inconvenient but we are trying to find a balance between security and convenience, leaning slightly towards security. Remember, we’re trying to protect you, the user.
Change My Password. A user now may change her/his password to login to Denticon. The option may be found under, Setup, Security, below Groups. Change My Password. This option allows the user ton only change the password for the currently logged in user.
We’ve also implemented a new requirement for the password to be at least eight characters. This new requirement doesn’t go for current passwords, but any change or any new user, we now require at least eight characters.
Password Expiration. For security reasons, the Denticon passwords will expire from a year after it’s been changed. This will help offices maintain their high level of security. This is true for all new users you create from today on.
If we assume that you updated your password today, 4/25/2012, your password will expire on 4/25/2013. Starting on 4/11/2013 (14 days prior to the expiration date) the system will start warning you to change your password, but still let you continue to work in Denticon. If for some reason, you do not update your password before 4/25/2013, the system will not let you into Denticon and will tell you to contact your system administrator, where they can now reset your password again.
Below is an explanation of what we did with existing users. For most of you, it may be more information than you care to know. However, for those of your currently responsible for maintaining users and passwords in your organization, it’s important that you understand what we did to your user records.
Since this expiration of passwords is a new concept in Denticon, if we took this concept literally with all of our thousands of users in the system, then most users’ passwords would have expired as soon as this update was loaded. That’s because most user records have not been changed in the last year. Since we wanted to avoid the chaos of thousands of passwords expiring at the same time, the expiration date has been set to expire in 2012 on the same month and date that the user information was created or last modified. E.g. if the user was last modified on 3/15/2008, the password expiration reset date was set to 3/15/2012. That means you have until 3/15/2013 before your password expires.
As a final note on this topic, you do NOT have to wait until your password expires to change your password. Since now you can do it yourself, you can do it at any time. Remember, your name gets attached to every new record, changed record, and deleted record (if you have those rights). If you feel that your password has been compromised, you can change it any time. Just remember what you changed it to so that your system administrator won’t have to be contacted to change it again, because you forgot your new password.