mount -t cifs fails if password is not read from prompt, how to fix?

I can successfully mount a windows network drive/share using this command: mount -t cfis //servername/sharename /mnt -o 'username=user,sec=ntlmssp' as running this commands prompts a password to be input and then if correct mounts. According to man mount.cifs I should be able to to this. mount -t cfis //servername/sharename /mnt -o 'username=user,password=pwd,sec=ntlmssp' or this PASSWD='pwd' mount -t cfis //servername/sharename /mnt -o 'username=user,sec=ntlmssp' However strangely both those commands fail with this message. mount error(13): Permission denied Now because our company does this "supersmart" thing to require passwords with **special characters** mine does contain a exclamation mark "!". I know that this would have a special meaning to the command line shell, so I have escaped it properly such that if my password was pwd! I would issue those two commands: PASSWD='pwd\!' mount -t cfis //servername/sharename /mnt -o 'username=user,sec=ntlmssp' mount -t cfis //servername/sharename /mnt -o 'username=user,password=pwd\!,sec=ntlmssp' but still it does not work. Connecting to Windows I do not have any particular feeling of urgency to hide my password (of appearing in the bash history) so I would be happy to find a way to skip the password prompt. Mostly I would like to know what the problem is? Lastly I have even tried a credentials file which also did not work.