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Getting Started
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Password Management Best Practices
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Why security?
Everyone's security needs are unique to them, and therefore it is vital that each user team analyzes their situation and make decisions on how they need to set up their distinct security goals.
Please take the time to go through our suggested best practices, and let our Customer Support Team know if you would like any consultation on them.
Alexandria is a secured program, meaning a username and password are always required to gain access to the service. It is for this reason that it is imperative to plan for and have access redundancies in place for your Alexandria service.
Click the sections below to expand for more information.
General best practices
- Don't share passwords.
- Don't use generic passwords or shared operator accounts. Each user should have their own unique username and password.
- Consider using a secure password management program to avoid forgetting your login info, and to avoid having your password in obvious places (like a post-it note on your desk).
- Keep your operating system, browsers, and COMPanion program up-to-date (if you are cloud hosted with us then you don’t have to worry about the last one).
- ALWAYS add a valid and current email to an operator patron file so that the operator can recover their password if needed.
- Make sure to whitelist noreply@goalexandria.com, which is the email address any password reset emails will come from. This might need to be done by a district or facility IT team.
- It's a good idea to have a plan to access the district admin's password/email if they leave, or have a backup district admin user.
- We recommend having two distinct highest level operators (District Administrator) for redundancies, in case one operator leaves, then the second operator can still access all areas of the program. These could be the District Librarian, Site or District Tech, or whoever has high-level responsibility over the library.
- Consider giving a backup, full-admin rights login to a person who is always onsite, like your principal IT technician. Even if they don't use Alexandria regularly, if you ever get locked out, someone can help. This can also be helpful if someone is helping out as a librarian temporarily, but the permanent librarian is unavailable to help give them temporary access.
- A lot of this may depend on the size of your facility, but a plan and policy decided by your administrative group should be made and put in place.
- It is not safe to use the same password on more than one site. If your password is hacked for one site, then it could potentially be used to get into multiple sites. Reusing passwords is not secure.
- COMPanion suggests creating a password that is hard to guess, and doesn't contain personal information like your birthdate or phone number. A strong password should be easy for you to remember, but hard for anyone to guess or associate with you. Avoid using simple phrases, words, or patterns that are easy to guess.
- Follow these simple steps to keep your data (and yourself) safe.
Read more: Keep your data safe—Password Required!
