Beware the hacker

Today there are so many connection points of convenience that you can easily connect your mobile device (laptop, smart phone, iPad) almost anywhere, anytime. So while it’s all about maximising your time to manage your business and/or your life, you the ‘road warrior’ unknowingly are opening up your business and personal data to the risk of hackers viewing and capturing your passwords, credit card and bank account details. Simply logging on to the hotel’s wireless network to book next week’s business trip or ordering that gift for your partner, you have potentially given away your business and personal credit card details. The ability of the hacker to monitor your wireless activity is fairly simple as they can either monitor the local wireless traffic or even set-up their laptop as a wireless access point, so the unsuspecting road warrior connects to a dummy wireless network and they simply capture all the information before passing it to the internet, leaving you the road warrior none the wiser. Now that the hacker has your credit card details they can either run up the charges until your card is maxed-out or simply sell your details on the world wide black market for a handsome sum. For today’s unassuming online consumer or small business operator, this is a security mine field. There are huge business and personal risks at stake and it’s difficult to know how to protect your data and what not to do. Having a VPN solution is often the best way to protect yourself when you’re roaming outside your office or home, however it can be expensive, complex to manage and inconvenient for an individual. Clearly, for the big corporations it is much simpler as they have an IT department that protects the interests of its road warriors, but unfortunately this often isn’t enough. Most corporate IT departments have a number of layers of security to minimise exposure of corporate data, but along with the layers, they have many other security restrictions. For example, users are not allowed to access the internet while logged on via their VPN. While there are VPN solutions available, the wireless security area is still very much in developmental phase. As hackers continue to become savvier in their approach to extracting information from our computers, the challenge for security will escalate. The advice for the road warrior is to keep a keen watch out for new solutions, upgrade your security measures as the technology evolves and do it as often as economically feasible. And, always remember not to take wireless roaming for granted. Always be aware when using your wireless device that someone might be watching you.