Only use your work password for work

Your AU passwords must remain on AU systems. Get tips on managing your passwords.


Protect your AU passwords

AU has a lot of very valuable data such as research results, registers and databases. Cybercriminals and foreign powers are also very interested in this data. This is why AU passwords must only be used for AU systems and must never be reused outside AU.

If you use the same password for your Wi-Fi at home, for streaming services, for social media and as a user at AU, you’ll give criminals free rein and access to important AU systems if they manage to crack the code in just one of these places.

As an extra layer of protection, we also use two-factor authentication on AU systems. When you use two-factor authentication, we can be sure that it’s you who is loggin in and not just somebody who has guessed or stolen your password. You can also activate two-factor authentication for your own services.

More tips

Get more tips on how to protect your login credentials.

Good advice on AU passwords

Create a good password

At AU, you are required to have a strong password that is difficult for others to guess. Your password must:

  • be at least 12 characters
  • not contain æ, ø or å
  • not contain spaces
  • contain both upper-case and lower-case letters as well as one of there special characters: ~!@#$%^&*_-+=`|(){}[]:;"'<>,.?/

A good password must be difficult to guess but easy for you to remember. So it’s a good idea to create a password made up of parts of an entire sentence you can remember easily. This is known as a pass phrase.

Read more about how to create a pass phrase.

Always use two-step authentication when you sign in

The system uses two-factor authentication to check whether it is actually you who is trying to log in to your account. You will typically be asked to confirm your identity using your mobile phone. In practice, this is the only effective way to prevent others from impersonating you online. Almost all logins with an AU account now use two-factor authentication, but in some cases, it is still just an option. 

For your own and the university’s sake, we recommend that you activate two-factor authentication for your private email account, social media accounts and all other accounts that require you to log in with a password. Your identity is a gateway to both personal and sensitive information, and you can keep this information safe by using two-factor authentication.

See how to activate two-factor authentication on AU systems in this guide.

See also how to enable two-factor authentication on a number of popular services at sikkerdigital.dk. (In Danish only.)


Change your password

Are you unsure whether your password is strong enough?

Find out how you change it here.


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