The password is complete nonsense however; like other aviation organisations they seem to have totally lost the plot!
MetO Response:
Firstly, our web delivery platform, which serves not just public content but also commercial services, aims to provide the key security principles of:
Confidentiality - the ability to hide information from those people unauthorised to see it.
Integrity - the ability to ensure the data is an accurate and unchanged representation of the original secure information.
Availability - the ability to ensure the information concerned is readily available to the authorised user.
Having a strong password policy is one of many mechanisms by which the Met Office provides the above principles and enables us to protect not only the users of our services but also the services themselves. As I previously mentioned, the web platform upon which General Aviation runs also runs other commerical services. As I am sure you can understand, it is very important that all of our users and services are protected, even if that means the password specification seems a little over-zealous for GA!
Failed oin this one: the ability to ensure the information concerned is readily available to the authorised user.