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duress password

duress password noun: a secondary password that will provide an alternative to standard unlocking of a computer, such as wiping the hard drive or alerting other users, in the event of the password being extorted from its holder.

Noun

duress password (plural duress passwords)

  1. A secondary password that will provide an alternative to standard unlocking of a computer, such as wiping the hard drive or alerting other users, in the event of the password being extorted from its holder.
    • Another safety feature is the use of duress passwords. When a user is under duress, such as when held at gunpoint and told to use a computer system, a duress password instead of a regular password can be entered.1983, Data Processing Digest, volume 29, page 22
    • Because a duress password may be employed when an individual user's safety is endangered (such as when an industrial spy has a gun to a user's head), it is advisable to have system access provided. The duress password is a convenient way for the user to tip-off the system operators on duty or other...1997, Charles Cresson Wood, Information Security Policies Made Easy A Comprehensive Set of Information Security Policies, 6 edition, Baseline Software, →ISBN, page 46

Examples of duress password in a sentence

  • Because a duress password may be employed when an individual user's safety is endangered (such as when an industrial spy has a gun to a user's head), it is advisable to have system access provided.1997, Charles Cresson Wood, Information Security Policies Made Easy A Comprehensive Set of Information Security Policies, 6 edition...
  • A primary weapon in such cases is the duress password.[2006 April 24, Robert Schifreen, Defeating the Hacker: A Non-technical Guide to Computer Security, Wiley Publishing, →ISBN, page 42:
  • The duress password is always the user’s password with the first character moved to the end.2010 August, Tim Calabro, Robert Kao, William Petz, Dante Sarigumba, “Introducing Common IT Settings”, in Blackberry All-in-One for...
  • In this case the victim could enter a duress password which informs the police unnoticed, while providing the cash.2010, Eugeen A. Matthys, “16. IS – User authentication”, in Business Continuity Management, →ISBN:

Forms of duress password

pluralduress passwords

Origin of duress password

From duress + password.

Questions about duress password

What does duress password mean?
Duress password means a secondary password that will provide an alternative to standard unlocking of a computer, such as wiping the hard drive or alerting other users, in the event of the password being extorted from its holder.
How do you use duress password in a sentence?
Because a duress password may be employed when an individual user's safety is endangered (such as when an industrial spy has a gun to a user's head), it is advisable to have system access provided.
What part of speech is duress password?
Duress password is a noun.
What is the plural of duress password?
The plural of duress password is duress passwords.

Words near duress password in the dictionary

  1. Durens
  2. dures
  3. Duresm
  4. duress
  5. duress of circumstances
  6. duress password
  7. duress passwords
  8. duresse
  9. duressed
  10. duresses
  11. duressing

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: duress password (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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