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@MeesterTurner said: In our software, people who forget their passwords have a box asking them to go to the IT helpdesk. I've always wondered what happens if whoever's manning the IT helpdesk consequently forgets their password since that'll be the person who's got to go to himself to reset his password, but he can't login because he forgot his password, so he has to go to himself... ad infinitum
Nope. Sorry to bring reality into this, but what happens when the helpdesk staffer forgets his password is, he asks his coworker to reset his password for him, and she ridicules him about it for days.
Now, if *all* of the helpdesk staffers currently working forget their passwords, they call up the server admin, and he resets one of their passwords, and the designated helpdesk staffer resets the rest. (I've only been around once for this; it was 11pm, there were only two people on staff at the helpdesk, and I can't remember why I was still there, but they tried my office phone and got me.)
If the server admin has also forgotten his password, and so have his coworkers, then the database that stores the passwords gets a short outage while it's re-educated on certain matters. Exactly how short this outage is, and whether the rest of the users will also need a password change, depends upon the technology in question and the competency of the staff in question (the latter being in serious doubt, because they're supposed to know these things. Only time I've seen something like this happen, it was a development machine, and its passwords were all changed by the one admin who was using it. Right before COB, on a Wednesday before Thanksgiving. WTF.)