TECH SECURITY ARTICLES

How To Keep Your Laptop Secure When Using Public Wi-Fi Hotspots

They are everywhere these days. Wi-Fi hot-spots for checking e-mail and hopping on the Internet can be found in airports, coffee shops, bookstores, and even most fast food restaurants. For the uninitiated, Wi-Fi hot-spots are areas where you can use your wireless laptop to surf the Web and check e-mail.

But have you ever wondered, just how safe is it to connect? With the proliferation of hackers, viruses and identity theft at an all time high, you are smart to be concerned. Unfortunately, it is easy for a hacker to set up a Wi-Fi hot-spot to access your laptop, called an "evil twin."

An evil twin is a wireless hot-spot that is used to lure people from a nearby, legitimate hot-spot. For example, when logging in at your favorite coffee shop, you may have inadvertently logged into an evil twin Internet connection set up by the person working on a laptop at the next table.

Just like legitimate sites, evil twins allow you access to the Internet, but in the background they record everything you are typing. Log onto your email, investment website, bank account, or buy something online, and they are recording your keystrokes. You may be asking, "How do I protect myself at Wi-Fi hot-spots?" First you need to make sure the hot-spot is legitimate.

You can do this by asking someone who works at the Wi-Fi location; in fact, some businesses will give you printed instructions that include the hot-spot name. Even here you need to be careful. Many times, in an attempt to make you feel comfortable, the hacker will use an evil twin name that mimics the legitimate hot-spot and, on some occasions, the fake site may even show up at the top of your network list by having a stronger signal than the legitimate site.

The best protection you can have is connecting via your company's VPN (virtual private network). A VPN protects your online information by encrypting your data and activity even if you're connected through an evil twin. If you don't have a VPN, the best protection is to surf the net, but never type in password, credit card, social security, bank account, or other sensitive information when connected to a public Wi-Fi hot-spot.

If you have questions about keeping your laptop secure when you travel, give our tech staff a call at 291-0370 - they will be more than happy to answer any security questions you have.