A security examiner has been given permission by senior management to conduct a password audit. What should the examiner ensure after the process completes?

Password cracking tools such as Hashcat and John the Ripper store cracked hash-to-plaintext mappings in pot files (e.g., hashcat.potfile, john.pot) during an audit. These files accumulate sensitive credential data and must be securely removed upon completion to comply with data handling requirements and ensure cracked passwords cannot be accessed beyond the authorized audit scope.

Defining password acceptability rules is a policy-level activity that should occur before or independently of the audit, not a post-audit cleanup step for removing cracking artifacts.

Whether users may change passwords at their discretion is a general access control policy decision unrelated to the cleanup of sensitive cracking tool artifacts after an audit.

Consolidating cracked passwords onto a single system still leaves sensitive credential data exposed and at risk; the correct post-audit action is complete removal of cracked credential artifacts, not centralization.