The HIPAA Privacy Regulations require that appropriate administrative, technical, and physical safeguards are in place to protect the privacy of protected health information. To meet this requirement, New Jersey Substance Abuse Monitoring System(NJSAMS) has implemented a change to the password policy for all accounts used for accessing the NJSAMS web site.

The following represents the minimum requirements for your NJSAMS password.

• Password complexity: Must not contain significant portions (three or more contiguous characters) of your User Id, must be at least eight (8) characters in length, must not use control characters and other non-printing characters, and must contain characters from at least three of the following four categories arranged in any order.
  • English uppercase characters (A through Z)
  • English lowercase characters (a through z)
  • Base 10 digits (0 through 9)
  • Non-alphabetic characters: ~!@#$%^*&;?.+_
• Maximum age: All passwords must be changed at least every sixty (60) days.
• History: Set at six (6), meaning the password needs to be set six times before it can be reused.
• Account Lockout Threshold: After five (5) unsuccessful attempts to enter a password, the involved user-ID will be temporarily disabled for five (5) minutes after which the account will be automatically unlocked.