How do I generate a SALT in Java for Salted-Hash?

Inspired from this post and that post, I use this code to generate and verify hashed salted passwords. It only uses JDK provided classes, no external dependency.

The process is:

• you create a salt with getNextSalt
• you ask the user his password and use the hash method to generate a salted and hashed password. The method returns a byte[] which you can save as is in a database with the salt
• to authenticate a user, you ask his password, retrieve the salt and hashed password from the database and use the isExpectedPassword method to check that the details match

/**
 * A utility class to hash passwords and check passwords vs hashed values. It uses a combination of hashing and unique
 * salt. The algorithm used is PBKDF2WithHmacSHA1 which, although not the best for hashing password (vs. bcrypt) is
 * still considered robust and <a href="https://security.stackexchange.com/a/6415/12614"> recommended by NIST </a>.
 * The hashed value has 256 bits.
 */
public class Passwords {

  private static final Random RANDOM = new SecureRandom();
  private static final int ITERATIONS = 10000;
  private static final int KEY_LENGTH = 256;

  /**
   * static utility class
   */
  private Passwords() { }

  /**
   * Returns a random salt to be used to hash a password.
   *
   * @return a 16 bytes random salt
   */
  public static byte[] getNextSalt() {
    byte[] salt = new byte[16];
    RANDOM.nextBytes(salt);
    return salt;
  }

  /**
   * Returns a salted and hashed password using the provided hash.<br>
   * Note - side effect: the password is destroyed (the char[] is filled with zeros)
   *
   * @param password the password to be hashed
   * @param salt     a 16 bytes salt, ideally obtained with the getNextSalt method
   *
   * @return the hashed password with a pinch of salt
   */
  public static byte[] hash(char[] password, byte[] salt) {
    PBEKeySpec spec = new PBEKeySpec(password, salt, ITERATIONS, KEY_LENGTH);
    Arrays.fill(password, Character.MIN_VALUE);
    try {
      SecretKeyFactory skf = SecretKeyFactory.getInstance("PBKDF2WithHmacSHA1");
      return skf.generateSecret(spec).getEncoded();
    } catch (NoSuchAlgorithmException | InvalidKeySpecException e) {
      throw new AssertionError("Error while hashing a password: " + e.getMessage(), e);
    } finally {
      spec.clearPassword();
    }
  }

  /**
   * Returns true if the given password and salt match the hashed value, false otherwise.<br>
   * Note - side effect: the password is destroyed (the char[] is filled with zeros)
   *
   * @param password     the password to check
   * @param salt         the salt used to hash the password
   * @param expectedHash the expected hashed value of the password
   *
   * @return true if the given password and salt match the hashed value, false otherwise
   */
  public static boolean isExpectedPassword(char[] password, byte[] salt, byte[] expectedHash) {
    byte[] pwdHash = hash(password, salt);
    Arrays.fill(password, Character.MIN_VALUE);
    if (pwdHash.length != expectedHash.length) return false;
    for (int i = 0; i < pwdHash.length; i++) {
      if (pwdHash[i] != expectedHash[i]) return false;
    }
    return true;
  }

  /**
   * Generates a random password of a given length, using letters and digits.
   *
   * @param length the length of the password
   *
   * @return a random password
   */
  public static String generateRandomPassword(int length) {
    StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(length);
    for (int i = 0; i < length; i++) {
      int c = RANDOM.nextInt(62);
      if (c <= 9) {
        sb.append(String.valueOf(c));
      } else if (c < 36) {
        sb.append((char) ('a' + c - 10));
      } else {
        sb.append((char) ('A' + c - 36));
      }
    }
    return sb.toString();
  }
}