In some environments, Ingres uses the ingvalidpw program to validate user passwords. It is not strictly a part of Ingres Net. The passwords may originate from any local application or from a remote application coming through Ingres Net or the Data Access Server.

Ingvalidpw is used depending on the requirements of the platform where the password is validated. For example, the DBMS Server uses the ingvalidpw program to validate shadow passwords on UNIX or to enforce C2 security in some UNIX environments.