# Basic Authentication

With Basic Auth, user accounts are managed by Lenses and a unique username and a password are used to log in.

## Account locking <a href="#account-locking" id="account-locking"></a>

For BASIC and LDAP authentication type, there is the option to set a policy to temporarily lock the account when successive login attempts fail. Once the lock time window has passed the user can log in again.

[Configure account locking](/latest/devx/5.5/deployment/configuration/iam/authentication.md#account-locking).

## Accounts storage <a href="#accounts-storage" id="accounts-storage"></a>

The internal database that stores user/group information is stored on disk, under the `lenses.storage.directory` or an external Postgres database.

If using the embedded H2 database keep this directory intact between updates and upgrades.

## Password rules <a href="#password-rules" id="password-rules"></a>

To enforce specific password rules the following configurations need to be set:

{% code title="security.conf" %}

```bash
# The regex security.confcheck the password. If it does not meet the requirements adding a user account or changing the
# password will be rejected.
lenses.security.basic.password.rules.regex = "((?=.*\\d)(?=.*[a-z])(?=.*[A-Z])(?=.*[@#$%]).{6,20})"

# Human readable description for the password rule. This will be returned to the user when the requirements fail
lenses.security.basic.password.rules.desc = "Password needs to contain: one lower case, one upper case, 1 number, one special character, and have a length of 6 to 20 characters"
```

{% endcode %}

## Password history <a href="#password-history" id="password-history"></a>

To not allow previous passwords to be reused, use the following configuration:

{% code title="security.conf" %}

```bash
# When a user tries to change her password, she cannot use any the last # passwords used in the past
# Default value is 1
lenses.security.basic.password.history.count = 3
```

{% endcode %}


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