STIGUI
V-252705CAT II — Medium severitySV-252705r1268254_rule

IBM z/OS must enforce a minimum eight character password length.

Rule version ACF2-ES-000990 · STIG v9 · 2026-09-01

Discussion

The shorter the password, the lower the number of possible combinations that need to be tested before the password is compromised.

Password complexity, or strength, is a measure of the effectiveness of a password in resisting attempts at guessing and brute-force attacks. Password length is one factor of several that helps to determine strength and how long it takes to crack a password. Use of more characters in a password helps to exponentially increase the time and/or resources required to compromise the password.

Check

From an ACF command screen enter: SET CONTROL(GSO) LIST PSWD

If "MINPSWD" is set to "8", this is not a finding.

Fix

Configure the Password option "MINPSWD" to "8".

Identifiers

Group ID
V-252705
Group title
SRG-OS-000481-GPOS-00481
Rule ID
SV-252705r1268254_rule
Check ID
C-56161r1001145_chk
Fix ID
F-56111r819059_fix