Nowadays you find Wi-Fi networks you can access easily everywhere… in coffee shops, restaurants and hotels, shopping malls, even out in the open street in major city centres.

This is great. It means that you can go online from your mobile phone, smartphone, tablet or laptop, indeed any portable device, in most places at any time at all.

The problem, as ever with the internet, is security.

What is Wi-Fi?

Wi-Fi (or WiFi) is a local area wireless technology that allows electronic devices to connect to each other. The term is not an abbreviation. It was invented as a play on the word Hi-Fi and is just a fancy name for a wireless local area network (WLAN).

Many devices, such as personal computers, video-game consoles, smartphones, digital cameras, tablets and digital audio players, can be connected using Wi-Fi. They link to a network (such as the internet) via a wireless network access point known as a hotspot.

Walls block the radio waves used by this technology. So indoors, the range is limited to about 20 meters (66 feet). Outdoors, however multiple overlapping access points enable many square kilometres to be covered by a single public Wi-Fi network.

Security problems with Wi-Fi

Wi-Fi can be less secure than wired connections. This is simply because an intruder does not need a physical connection.

Most of us are pretty good at protecting our PCs at home, using firewalls to prevent cyber-criminals from accessing our information and anti-virus software to reduce our chances of becoming infected with a computer virus or other malware.

The same threats are present when you access the internet using a public Wi-Fi network. The added problem is that you can never be sure whether a particular network or hotspot is secure.

Most public Wi-Fi networks do not use encryption, a form of security in which the information you send is encoded so it cannot be read by a third party.

In addition, you don’t even need a password to get connected to most public networks, which means that they are open to anyone in the area including you friendly local cyber-thief.

Logging into your bank account or other personal account over an unsecured network can be particularly dangerous as your log-in details could easily be read by a hacker, who will then be in a position to clean out your bank account or impersonate you using your personal details.

Protection on a public Wi-Fi network

As you can see, using public Wi-Fi networks can be quite risky. However, you can make yourself relatively secure if you follow these seven tips:

[1] Whatever device you use to access the internet, check that your anti-virus and anti-malware software is up to date and turned on.

[2] To make it more difficult for an attacker to gain access, make sure your firewall is turned on.

[3] Turn off sharing when you are on a public network. This will keep others from accessing your computer and files. You can turn it off in the Control Panel (Windows) or System preferences (Mac OS X).

[4] Avoid logging on to banking and shopping sites where, to do so, you have to enter personal and financial information. You should only do online banking or shopping over a trusted connection, such as a home network you know is protected.

[5] Go to sites with URLs that begin with “https” instead of “http”, as “https” sites use encryption to protect the information you send.

[6] Avoid automatically connecting to hotspots. Doing so will reduce your chances of being connected to a malicious hotspot set up to steal information. As before, you can do this from the Control Panel (Windows) or System preferences (Mac OS X).

[7] If you use public Wi-Fi a lot, a good idea would be to use a virtual private network (VPN). A VPN is like a private network which you can access from anywhere. However you need to subscribe to a VPN service for which there is a monthly fee. However a VPN is a smart choice for businesses, large and small.

There have recently been a significant number of articles in the media relating to what are called “Spear Phishing Attacks”.

Although directed, for the moment, mainly at larger organisations, they are causing a degree of concern throughout all business sectors and technical computer support personnel.

What are they and are you vulnerable?

Phishing – a recap

To begin with, there is nothing new in this approach which is used by various forms of hackers and crooks to gain access to your confidential information.

It basically involves putting something on a screen in front of you, perhaps an e-mail or a website screen, that appears to be one thing when it is actually something else. You trust the screen in front of you and therefore obligingly enter things like your ID and password or follow the links it contains.

In fact, you are not communicating with anything legitimate and the people you have provided your password and ID to will make use of them for their own various nefarious purposes.

Although this has been around for a long time, there has recently been a variation developed which has earned the title Spear Phishing.

Spear Phishing

What happens here is that you will receive an e-mail from a friend or organisation that appears to be extremely credible in terms of its origin.

It will seem to be so because the crooks of the world have realised just how much public domain information is now freely available online relating to individuals and their business connections. For example, in facilities such as FACEBOOK and LINKEDIN, it may be comparatively easy to look at public information pages that give at least some details relating to you but also numbers of your business and personal contacts.

So, it is comparatively easy to craft an e-mail to you that appears to be coming from someone you know and trust. As a general rule, that e-mail will also invite you to send a note or look at something online, courtesy of a provided link. When you follow the link, you’ll be asked to enter your Microsoft Outlook ID and password.

From that point onwards, the tale will follow a gloomy pathway of allowing outside people access to some of your most personal and private communications.

Can you stop it?

The bad news about this type of attack is that it cannot be stopped through technical means.

It can be difficult or impossible for software, anti-virus systems or even online helpdesk support services to spot that an e-mail is not from the originator it claims to be from.

So, the ultimate weapon against it is common sense and public awareness. If you receive an e-mail from someone you know, you should really look at it and ask yourself a few questions:

1. Is the person’s phraseology exactly as you would normally expect to see it?

2. Does it contain minor grammatical errors and glitches in the English language?

3. Is that e-mail out of context? For example, are they asking you to send something or look at something which you have already previously discussed with them?

4. Is it referring to a subject matter that isn’t one you would normally expect them to be raising in an e-mail?

Two final stages:

1. Is the link it contains showing up with an “HTTPS” prefix? If it isn’t, that can be a warning sign.

2. Don’t hesitate to send a separate e-mail to the originator (NOT simply hitting the ‘REPLY’ button to the e-mail you are in doubt about), asking them if they sent it.

The bottom line is simple – vigilance is required.

Look around your organization for a few minutes, taking careful note of smartphones, tablets, and even smart watches in use. You probably see a lot more mobile devices in use today than you did a year or two ago. Now think ahead a few years, to 2019. According to a new report by MarketsandMarkets, you’ll be seeing a lot more of them. In fact, the report predicts that the enterprise mobility management (EMM) market will be worth $15,224.1 million by 2019.

With a compound annual growth rate of 36.9 percent from 2014 to 2019, the EMM market is expected to grow at an eye-popping rate — and for good reason (Source: Benzinga). As more workers rely on their own devices, their actions have the potential to strain networks and compromise security. At the same time, enterprise mobility brings a wealth of advantages. Striking the right balance is essential.

Why Manage Enterprise Mobility?

Smartphones, tablets, and wearable devices are here to stay, and employees are using them to connect to corporate networks. A recent study by BitDefender found that 60 percent of respondents had done so. Today’s mobile devices can virtually “do it all,” and your employees do not want to maintain and carry around two separate “do it all” devices. Even former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton resisted carrying around two Blackberry devices in favor of one for both official and personal use.

Because your employees will be accessing enterprise networks via personal devices, enterprise mobility must be managed. You’ll need to ensure that mobile workers have a secure means of accessing business applications and data regardless of device type. You’ll also need to offer effective mobile productivity and collaboration tools so that they do not feel the need to use external, and potentially less secure, applications.

Enterprise mobility also has its advantages. For example, service technicians can receive service and work order requests in real time while out in the field. They can also update their work orders immediately as well as order parts or schedule follow-up service. They can capture signatures or collect mobile payments. In short, you probably want mobile devices in many, if not all, of your employees’ hands.

In addition to managing mobility for security purposes, you’ll also want to manage it for performance. Mission critical applications such as sales force automation, business intelligence, and CRM need to perform regardless of where the end user happens to be. Meanwhile, many applications, especially videoconferencing and streaming applications, require extensive bandwidth. With multiple users using bandwidth-intensive applications on mobile and fixed devices, your enterprise network will begin to feel the strain.

Managing Enterprise Mobility Now

The EMM market is likely to be thriving in 2019, but what about now? According to MarketsandMarkets, the market was worth $3,169 million in 2014. EMM solutions such as Aryaka’s IP Application Delivery as a Service currently exist, providing optimized, enterprise-grade connectivity to remote and mobile users along with a superior means of accessing centralized enterprise resources (Source: Aryaka).

Look around your organization. Enterprise mobility is everywhere! How are you managing it?

Works Cited:

1. Benzinga, “Enterprise Mobility Management Market Worth $15,224.1 Million by 2019 – New Report by MarketsandMarkets,” – http://www.benzinga.com/pressreleases/15/04/p5413230/enterprise-mobility-management-market-worth-15-224-1-million-by-2019-ne

2. Aryaka, “Use Case: Mobile Acceleration,” – http://www.aryaka.com/use-cases/mobile-acceleration/

It doesn’t take much to make the case that modern technology has improved the way we do business. Consider just a few decades ago we were without cell phones, e-mail, and the Internet. Tasks today that take minutes used to take hours. That said, there can be many headaches that come with modern software solutions, but a good partnership with a strong technology support company can ensure that your business IT solutions are running smoothly.

If you’re a business that is due for an upgrade, don’t let lack of technical knowledge or the fear of the unknown deter you from capitalizing on all the ways these new innovations can improve your business. Check out just a few ways technology can advance your business position in the marketplace, and help give you a leg up on your competition.

Marketing

Marketing has changed more in the past 15 years than the previous 100 years combined. New innovations have created many new media options that have expanded our reach and ability to interact with our consumers. Whether you’re installing an upgraded customer relationship management (CRM) system, blasting out an e-mail campaign, managing all of your social media through a program aggregate, or hosting a webinar, new technology is the driving force behind the campaign. Remember, a technology support company will offer services to help you understand how your system can handle this load, and will work with you if you need assistance installing the software to launch some of these exciting campaigns in your business.

Communication

It is hard to imagine there is an entire generation of workers in place who have never had to do business without emails and cell phones. Modern advances give us access to unparalleled communication not only with our consumers, but internally within our own organizations as well. Modern businesses are expected to have comprehensive communications platforms, and a technology support company on call to manage all of the servers should anything go wrong. While a 24-hour turn around used to be acceptable in terms of customer service, those rules have changed; modern advances give us the tools we need to meet the expectations of our consumers.

Productivity

The right hardware running updated software solutions is the key to productivity in your business. In this era, our employees wear many hats and it’s incredibly important to give them the right tools to get the job done quickly and efficiently. Tools like voice to text, online chat, and teleconferencing, are just a few ways to improve productivity in the workplace. Whether it’s in your customer service department, giving customers an online chat option to get instant access to a service representative, to your internal communications and company meetings, working with a technology support company to have the right software solutions for your business is your key to having a productive, efficient workplace.

Modern IT solutions offer an abundance of opportunities for better ways to do business. These are just a few of the improvements you can look forward to when you utilize new solutions. Coupled with a good relationship with a technology support company, you can be sure that your business with survive and thrive for years to come.

The internet has transformed the way people live. It has changed everything from the way we learn to the way we shop. We use the internet to carry out a number of activities ranging from reading news, playing games and interacting with friends and family, besides a number of other things. We think that we only receive information from the internet; however, this is far from the truth. In the process of browsing the internet, we actually send out a lot of information such as our identity and location. We generally aren’t as safe on the internet as we may think we are.

For instance, when shopping online, our name, address, and credit card information are transmitted over the internet to the vendor. With such private information being channeled through the internet, it is vital that certain measures be taken to ensure privacy and confidentiality of the data. Latest information technology news tells us that the number of cyber crimes is on the rise.

This is where encryption comes in. Simply put, encryption scrambles the data which is to be transmitted over the internet in a way that can only be decrypted by someone who has the encryption key.

The concept of encryption is based on cryptography, and it is of two types:

1. Public Key Encryption
2. Symmetric Key Encryption

Public Key Encryption

With this type of encryption, two different keys are used. There’s a public key and there’s a private key. For example, if a person wants to send encrypted data over the internet, the public key is used to encrypt the data; however, the data can only be encrypted by the recipient using their private key.

This method can be used to send secure emails and to digitally sign the documents. Secure Socket Layer (SSL) and its newer method, the Transport Layer Security (TLS), are examples of public key encryption systems.

Symmetric Key Encryption

In this method of encryption, both the sender and the receiver use the same encryption key. This simplifies the process and makes it faster. Nonetheless, the key and the data can be compromised while in transit over the internet. Data Encryption Standard (DES) was a type of symmetric key encryption that is replaced by a more modern Advanced Encryption Standard (AES).

Encryption of Data

The advantages of encryption aren’t just limited to the internet; you can encrypt your data on your computer, your USB storage devices, hard drives, mobile devices and numerous other data storage devices in order to prevent misuse of data if your devices are lost or stolen.

Importance of Encryption

As learnt from the latest information technology news, the number of cyber crimes is on the rise and this makes it necessary for computer users to keep their data safe from hackers. Large corporations and governments require high levels of encryption in order to protect their sensitive plans such as business secrets and confidential data. It also gives us peace of mind that our data is not getting into the wrong hands.