Bulletin: How EpiCenter Manages User Passwords

EpiCenter offers a set of built-in password complexity rules intended to enhance password security. EpiCenter customers may enable any subset of these rules to restrict user passwords.  When no password rules are enabled, EpiCenter will allow users to choose passwords without restriction. Passwords may be of any length and contain any combination of character types (upper/lower case letters, numbers, or punctuation).

Password Rules Supported by EpiCenter

As of the release of EpiCenter version 3.5.18, the password validation rules are as follows:

  • The password must be at least 8/9/10/12 characters (length to be selected by the customer).
  • The password must contain 1-digit character.
  • The password must contain at least 1 lowercase character.
  • The password must contain at least 1 non-alphanumeric character.
  • The password must contain at least 1 uppercase character.
  • The password must not contain any whitespace.
  • The password must not contain the person’s username, spelled either forward or backward.
  • Lock account for a certain length of time after a certain number of failed login attempts.
    • Length of time and number of failed login attempts must be specified by the customer.
  • The password will expire after a certain number of days.
    • The number of days must be specified by the customer.

If an organization enables one or more of the above password selection rules, EpiCenter will enforce all enabled rules for all new passwords. In other words, a chosen password must conform to every rule that has been activated. If any of the enabled rules is violated, the password is invalid and the system will disallow it.

Pittsburgh Technology Council Honors Health Monitoring Again; Company is Finalist for Innovator of the Year in the Health IT Category

For the third time in four years, Health Monitoring has been selected by Pittsburgh Technology Council as a finalist in the Tech 50 Awards. This year, Health Monitoring was again honored in the category of Health IT Innovator of the Year.

Since 1996, the PTC’s Tech 50 Awards have recognized the most successful and innovative technology companies in southwestern Pennsylvania. The awards put a spotlight on the region’s transformative technology centers of excellence, including tech companies at all stages of growth. The council also names the region’s top tech executive for the year.

“We are proud to be nominated in the category of Innovator of The Year,” says Kevin Hutchison, CEO of Health Monitoring. “Our company currently provides health monitoring coverage to 12.5% of the American population, and we are continuing to expand our services to help public health departments collect and track vital community health information.”

Health Monitoring is the country’s largest provider of population health monitoring systems, collecting, processing, and analyzing information from 3,600 ambulatory care facilities, nearly 600 hospitals, and the National Poison Data System. Its current projects focus on new applications of real-time data that enable users to track the prevalence of opioid addiction and related conditions.

The Tech 50 award winners will be announced on October 25, 2018 at the Wyndham Grand Pittsburgh.

For more information on Tech 50 and all of the finalists, visit PTC’s page for the event.
For more information on the Pittsburgh Technology Council, visit www.pghtech.org.