Definition
Password rotation is a security policy that mandates the periodic change of user account passwords to mitigate the risk of unauthorized access due to compromised credentials.
How it works
Users may be requested to change their passwords on a regular schedule. Management servers with enterprise policies for account management provide the ability to change or reset passwords for accounts.
Considerations
Requiring users to change their passwords frequently can result in insecure password practices by the user. The latest update of NIST SP 800-63B, Digital Identity Guidelines, recommends requiring password reset only when a known compromise has occurred, or every 365 days, rather than every 60 or 90 days.
Implementation perspective
Password Rotation should be treated as a technical defensive capability rather than a product checkbox. In practice, teams should define the protected scope, the conditions under which the technique acts, and the observable evidence that demonstrates the intended behavior. For this technique, likely engineering context includes Credential, Password.
Use the technique to increase the effort, prerequisites, or constraints an adversary must overcome before exploitation or misuse succeeds.
Questions to ask
- Which component, configuration, credential, interface, or behavior is being hardened?
- What secure baseline or policy defines the intended state?
- How are exceptions approved, time-limited, and reviewed?
- How is the hardened state verified after deployment and significant change?
Evidence and validation
- Approved hardening standards and configuration baselines
- Automated configuration or integrity assessment results
- Exception records with owners, rationale, and expiration dates
- Test results demonstrating that the intended restriction is enforced
Common failure patterns
- A secure setting is documented but not enforced consistently across the environment.
- Hardening breaks required functions and is permanently weakened through undocumented exceptions.
- Teams measure deployment of a product rather than verification of the hardened condition.
This implementation perspective is original Bare Metal Cyber educational content. It does not replace the official D3FEND definition or establish that a specific product implements the technique.
Technique hierarchy
Top-level family
Parent techniques
Direct child techniques
Artifacts and ontology entities
These relationships describe how D3FEND connects a defensive technique to artifacts or other ontology entities. They describe graph semantics, not a product certification.
Explicit technique relationships
Show inferred artifact relationship paths (3)
Offensive-technique relationships
These relationships are generated from D3FEND graph paths and are explicitly experimental. They should be treated as hypotheses for defensive analysis—not as proof that the technique prevents, detects, or removes an offensive behavior.
ATT&CK Enterprise (20)
ATT&CK for ICS (3)
Authoritative sources
- Open this technique on the official D3FEND website ↗
- Open the official ontology resources ↗
- Password and Key Rotation ↗SSH · InternetArticleReference
- Related source ↗
- Related source ↗
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