Administration

Employees must set a lifetime password for their Penn State Account by May 12

Credit: Talia Barnes/Penn StateAll Rights Reserved.

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Recent changes to the Penn State Account password policy require faculty, staff and technical service employees to choose a lifetime password.

If you are a Penn State employee and have not already selected a lifetime password, you must do so by May 12, when your current password will expire. If you haven't changed your password by the expiration date, you will receive an error message when you try to log in to WebAccess and you will not be permitted to log in until you have changed to a Lifetime Password. 

If your local IT department provided you with instructions for changing your password, please follow those instructions. Otherwise, follow the steps to change and set your new lifetime password here.

Prior to the new lifetime password policy, your password expired once a year, forcing you to come up with — and remember — yet another password. Regular password changes were thought to reduce the chances that someone would obtain unauthorized access to your account. Your lifetime password will never expire and never needs to be changed unless someone else gains access to it.  

In addition to eliminating the need for regular password changes, security experts now recommend eliminating requirements like the use of upper- and lower-case letters and special characters. Instead, best practices call for longer “passphrases” that are difficult to crack because they are meaningful only to the individual user.

To learn more about this new type of password and find tips for choosing one, see Choosing Your Penn State Account Password.

Last Updated May 25, 2021