The Hell of Password Security

Source: Wikimedia

I'm lost in the Hell of Password Security today. My work account keeps getting locked even though I am logged in and happily working normally. This implies there is some process somewhere on some device trying to use the wrong password and it just keeps trying until the account gets locked. I have had to call our help desk 4 times so far. I'm not a fan of the "keep retrying" strategy when a login fails for software design. To be fair, it works most of the time, but then this scenario comes up. From talking to our help desk people, it definitely happens to other employees too.

Individually, this happens to me about once per year and I'm unsure why exactly although it is my habit of having several different devices logged in at the same time: physical machines, Citrix desktop session, Teams clients, and Remote Desktop to multiple servers. I logged out everything I could find but it hasn't stopped so far. It makes for a long morning if you are trying to get anything done.

I also got called in the middle of the night last night to work on something that I had no access to fix. Then followed a long sequence of hot potato with the ticket as to who should fix it. It was terrible because I had sedated myself and could barely stay awake. The work week is off to a bad start.