Intent and Purpose of Passwords

 

Digital Communication

RWTH Aachen University enables you to communicate with RWTH or others via Internet. As a student you are able to access the learning material, hand in exercises, contact lecturers, apply for exams, and wirelessly connect to the Internet and lots more. As a staff member you are able to record credit points, make orders and manage the readingor writing access on documents with your research results.

Secret Passwords

The password has a central part in this context. By typing in your password you make sure, that it is just you,and no one else, accesses the data, provides documents, signs in or off for exams or communicates otherwise. To make sure that no one else acts under your name it is required that only you and the server of RWTH knows your password. For this reason the RWTH makes efforts to appropriately protect your passwords from theft and abuse.

Own Security Responsibility

But also you are obliged upon a security responsibility.

• You should not hand your password to others andtype your password only on PCs that you trust and which have up-to-date security software (virus scanner, firewall).
• Type your password only when you are sure, that RWTH Aachen University asks for it and not a fake malicious website.
• Therefore please check the address of the visited page! The address of RWTH pages the address always end with rwth-aachen.de (accordingly for FH Aachen pages end with fh-aachen.de) and
• use secure encryptionwhich is symbolized on different browsers with a closed padlock.