# CredentialsPolicyType (Complex Type)

### Namespace: http://midpoint.evolveum.com/xml/ns/public/common/common-3

Credentials management policy. It specifies the management details for each supported credentials type. It defines parameters such as credential lifetime. It may define even a very complex schemes for some credential types. E.g. it may define a complete security questions.

This section is a definition of user credentials that midPoint can MANAGE. Which mostly means writing/changing the credentials. This section is not directly concerned with authentication or credential reset - at least not directly. But there may be dependencies. E.g. password reset may use password policy to generate/validate new password. Also, resource-side passwords need to be defined here to be used by authentication modules.

Item Summary
Name | Type | Multiplicity | Description
--- | --- | --- | ---
default | container CredentialPolicyType | [0,1] | Common setting applied to all other credentials type.
password | container PasswordCredentialsPolicyType | [0,1] | Structure that specifies policy for password management.
securityQuestions | container SecurityQuestionsCredentialsPolicyType | [0,1] | Structure that specifies policy for security questions.
nonce | container NonceCredentialsPolicyType | [0,-1] | Nonce settings used to generate one-time random values.

- ### Items

  - #### default

    Flags: RAM,runtime

    Multiplicity: [0,1]

    Common setting applied to all other credentials type. Any of this setting can be overridden in the individual credentials setting.

  - #### password

    Flags: RAM,runtime

    Multiplicity: [0,1]

    Structure that specifies policy for password management. It is in fact only a simple reference to a password policy.

    This is a credential policy. Which means that it controls how credentials are set (stored). It does not control how credentials are used for authentication. That is controlled by the authentication module setting - and in fact this may even be out of our control completely, e.g. in case that external authentication is used (SSO).

  - #### securityQuestions

    Flags: RAM,runtime

    Multiplicity: [0,1]

    Structure that specifies policy for security questions. It actually contains text for the questions (or rather a reference to localization catalog file). But it also contains a policy how the questions can be used, e.g. how many questions to display to a user.

  - #### nonce

    Flags: RAM,runtime

    Multiplicity: [0,-1]

    Nonce settings used to generate one-time random values. Used in self-registration, e-mail-based password reset and possibly also other scenarios.