Re: Password "Hint" Feasibility

Paul,

What I did was creatr a command that help desk folks use to reset the password
back to "mother's maiden name". It adopts authority to let them do this. Under
the covers, this command also logs all resets to a file, including information 
on
date and time, user doing the reset, user being reset, etc. It also notifies
certain people if a profile has been reset a ceratin number of times within a
certain time period. It ALSO prevents the reseting (this way) of "sensitive
profiles" (i.e. QSECOFR, QPGMR and a number of others, including certain IS
folks...) and again, notifies certain people if this kind of reset attempt was
made.

I also have a program that monitors QSYSMSG message queue and lets specific 
folks
know that an invalid passord has been tried x times and the device varied off.

The reason we use "mother's maiden name: A certain group of users were required
to go through supervisors or worked off shift from how IS was staffed. They were
concerned with ANYONE knowing that the password was getting reset to User 
Profile
which everyone could figure out. I wrote a routine that sent a message to ALL
user and had a reply line for them to key in the "mother's maiden name" info (or
whatever they decided to key in). It was made CLEAR to them that whatever they
keyed in here was what their password would be reset to... This information was
checked for length and some other basic stuff. I could then read this 
information
into a database file that contained the user profile and other information.  So
the help desk folks just tell the user "OK your password had been reset to
mothers maiden name" or they tell the supervisor this and they tell the user...

Chuck


Paul Jackson wrote:

> One of the most frequent calls to our help desk is
> from people who have forgotten their AS/400 password.
> We would like to implement some method to allow users
> to store some "hint" or reminder text that they can
> use to jog their memory if they forget the password.
>
> I know that I can tinker with the CHGPWD routine (or
> create a new one higher in the library list) to prompt
> for password change info AND a text field. But does
> anyone know of any way of calling an application from
> the basic signon screen? For example, if someone
> forgets their password, they would like to press F24
> from the signon screen to bring up a password reminder
> prompt program.
>
> Is this even possible? I have my doubts because at the
> point the signon screen is processed, a job is not
> even active.
>
> I guess if they had access to another session, they
> could prompt a command to let them check their hint
> text, but this assumes another user is signed on and
> has access to that command.
>
> Any ideas suggestions? We would really like to reduce
> the burden from the help desk on having to reset so
> many users passwords.
>
> Thanks in advance for any suggestions,
>
> -Paul Jackson
> Costco Wholesale,
> Issaquah, WA
>
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