Mister IT password requirements

PURPOSE

The purpose of this procedure is to provide Mister standards for creating and protecting passwords.

SCOPE

This applies to all personnel who (1) have or are responsible for an account (or any form of access that supports or requires a password) on any system that resides at any Mister Car Wash facility, (2) have access to the Mister Car Wash network, or (3) store any non-public Mister Car Wash information.

DEFINITIONS

Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)

A method of authentication requiring more than one form of validation to verify the user’s identity for a login or other transaction.

Password Manager

A software application or a hardware device that is used to store and manage a person’s passwords. Typically, stored passwords are encrypted.

REQUIREMENTS

Password Creation

Passwords must meet these standards:

Be a minimum of 9 characters in length (passwords of 14 characters or more are better);
Not contain personal information, including birthdates, addresses, phone numbers, or names of family members, pets, friends, and fictional characters;
Not contain patterns or easily guessed sequences (e.g., “aaabbb”, “qwerty”, 123321”); and
Not be some version of “Welcome123”, “Password123”, “Changeme123”, and so on.

Passphrases, which are passwords made up of multiple words, are highly recommended. Passphrases like “it’stimeforvacation” and “block_curious_sunny_leaves” meet the password standards listed above and are easy to remember and type.

Additional Guidelines

Employees must use a separate, unique password for each work-related account they use.
Employees may not apply work-related passwords to their personal accounts.
It is highly recommended that some form of multi-factor authentication is used for any privileged accounts.
Do not use vendor-supplied defaults for system passwords and other security parameters.

Password Change

The maximum length of time between password changes is 120 days.
- To comply with PCI regulations, the maximum length of time between password changes for passwords used to access the Cardholder Data Environment (CDE) is 90 days.
Passwords cannot be the same as any of at least the last 4 passwords used.
Passwords must also be changed when there is reason to believe a password has been compromised.
Password cracking or guessing may be performed on a periodic basis by Mister IT or their delegates. If a password is guessed or cracked during one of these scans, the user will be required to change it.

Password Protection

Passwords must not be shared with anyone, including supervisors and coworkers. All passwords are to be treated as sensitive, confidential Mister information.
Passwords must not be inserted into email messages or other forms of electronic communication along with any user- or system-identifying information.
Passwords may be stored only in “password managers” authorized by the organization.
Do not use the “Remember Password” feature of applications (e.g., web browsers).
Any user suspecting that his/her password may have been compromised must report the incident and change all passwords.

Rate Limiting

An account will be locked out after 5 failed attempts.
After an account is locked due to failed attempts, the account will remain locked for 30 minutes.

Application Development

Application developers must make sure their programs contain the following security precautions:

Applications must support authentication of individual users, not groups.
Applications must not store passwords in clear text or in any easily reversible form.
Applications must not transmit passwords in clear text over the network.
Applications must provide for some sort of role management such that one user can take over the functions of another without having to know the other’s password.

Multi-Factor Authentication

Multi-factor authentication is highly encouraged and should be used whenever possible, not only for work-related accounts but for personal accounts as well.

Compliance

Mister IT will verify compliance through various methods, including, but not limited to, business tool reports, internal and external audits, and feedback to the owner.

Any exceptions must be approved by the IT Security Department in advance.

Any employee found to have violated these requirements may be subject to disciplinary action up to and including termination of employment.

Approved Exceptions

Inspyrus’s use of Jira for change management
Navisite’s use of ServiceNow for change management

HISTORY

Revised Date Revised By Revisions 02/1/2017 Jeff Parry Document created
7/1/2018 Lauren Babson Updated to reflect new NIST SP800-63.3 standards and PCI DSS 9/1/2019 Lucas Shippers Updated document formatting to match Mister policy/procedure format standards. Assigned policy number. Moved information from Appendix A: Password Construction Guidelines into the body of the policy. 1/1/2021 Lauren Babson Added rate limiting section & exceptions for applications not able to comply that fall within SOX audit scope 6/1/2021 Lauren Babson Updated password change policy per SOX audit. Set maximum length of time between password changes at 120 days.
10/14/2024 Andrew Poskey Moved to Fresh 3/13/2025 Andrew Poskey Updated title formatting