What's your Password?

NAV offers its own way of storing Passwords. I am not so much into encryption (right now), but it does seem to not be quite the best way for password protection.  But let's know whats going on here

1. How can you enter/store a password in NAV? For eg; storing an FTP password.

Create a field called Password in a table (just for ease I use inventory setup)
Set the property ExtendedDataType = Masked (This masks the input as shown)

When you try to extract this data eg. as a message, the encryption fails and you see the password in full glory. 

2. So how is User Login information stored in NAV?

The great revelation is Codeunit 9801 - Identity Management

ValidateKeyStrength: When you enter a pwd in the user card, this function perform tests on it. By default NAV needs the pwd to be of 8 chars, at least 1 uppercase, at least 1 lower case, at least 1 number.

GetMaskedNavPassword:  Here's the fun part. If a pwd was set, NAV just displays '********'. Yes.  8 stars. They are not hiding anything. They aren't encrypted values. Just stars. 

Identity Management is good way to get into access and identity areas of NAV.