Don’t tell a parrot your password, and other Google security advice

Google keeps on plugging up the enterprise holes in its Apps suite, first by offering SLAs, dashboards, and a new reseller program — and now it’s addressing security. Yesterday, Google unveiled new administrative controls for ensuring Google Apps passwords are secure, as well as a series of tips for helping users choose hard-to-crack passwords.

Google reiterated that it has always stressed good security controls for Apps, including offering SSL options, single sign-on capabilities and administrative controls for deciding how much information users can share within Google Docs, Sites and Calendar. Now, in addition to those tools, administrators can set password length requirements and view password strength indicators “to identify sufficiently long passwords that may still not be strong enough.” The company also said it continously monitors new password attacks, helping administrators identify formerly strong–yet newly vulnerable–passwords.

As part of the change, Google also provided a list of tips for choosing strong passwords. These include:

• * Do use punctuation marks and/or numbers

• * Do include similar looking substitutions, such as the number zero for the letter o

• * Don’t use personal information

• * Don’t use words or acronyms found in the dictionary

• * Don’t write your password down

• * Don’t send your password by e-mail, and

• * Don’t tell your password to anyone (including significant others, roommates or parrots).

Thanks for the tips, Google.

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