length of time for automatic timeout

[Rick Garland]

Hi all:

I am looking for some general guidelines as to the time length for automatic timeouts.

Working on HIPAA requirements and this is one of the requirements, but I cannot find anything that says how long.

What TMOUT values do you folks use?

[Henk Geurts · Accepted solution]

we always use a timeout value of 900 (=seconds)on all our HP servers

[Peter Godron]

15 Minutes

[Steven E. Protter]

Some systems 900 seconds. Others 1800. Our users get annoyed with the 15 minute timeout. I get annoyed with users staying logged on making it hard to down databases.

Peace talks are not going well at this point.

SEP

[Rick Garland]

SEP:

I know what you mean.
I tried 20 minutes but my DBA freaked out. She has a habit of opening some 10 windows per server and leaving them idle. Says there are for cut and paste.

The usrs have no trouble - they are transparent to this setting. They connect via SQLNET. I have suggested this setting be implemented for SQLNET connections but she refuses.

Its gotta be done - got to be HIPAA complient. This is one of the requirements for HIPAA.

What other timeout values are out there?

[A. Clay Stephenson]

I was fortunate enough to be able to draft a policy for this and set it at 20 minutes. I would set TMOUT to 1200 and if your DBA is not smart enough to know how to outbushwhack this then she probably doesn't doesn't need to be ... I don't think I will finish this sentence.

[Rick Garland]

Right on Clay. But I am not going to tell her either!