Keeping yourself protected in the Coffee Shop

Now, I don’t mean being aware of pickpockets or dare I say it, wearing your facemask – I’m talking about keeping yourself protected online.

And, just to be clear, I’m not picking on Coffee Shops, they are my example, purely because I’m sitting in one right now, as I type this article out. The same applies to any public/shared Wifi, such as the free Wifi found in pubs, restaurants, retailers, shopping centres etc.

Using the Wifi available to you, particularly if like me you regularly attend the coffee shop with your work laptop, is convenient. This convenience does come with a few potential risks though. The public wifi available in places like this, traditionally, isn’t that secure. You have no control of what’s going on behind the scenes with your data, and no control of what sort of tracking may or may not be happening.

From a Cyber Security perspective, the official line here should be simply not to use at all. However, as I live in the real world, and we work with businesses who are real-world businesses, the availability of free Wifi does have benefits for people to collaborate, or to simply go to Costa (other Coffee Shops are available) if the kids aren’t giving you any peace or the Internet at home has gone down.

So, what can you do to keep yourself protected from prying eyes? Thankfully there’s a really simple solution – something called a VPN (which stands for Virtual Private Network should you be interested).

Now, I’m not going to keep bogged down here with the different types of VPN, encryption levels or providers – there are many to choose from, and perhaps this is a separate article for another day. The point is – use one! Most modern ones will be secure, using a decent level of encryption – and quite simply, doing something is far better than doing nothing.

A couple of examples of VPN’s that I use on a regular basis are the VPN service built into our office router and an ‘external’ VPN from Cyber Ghost.

Whenever I’m doing anything work-related, and I’m not physically in the office (Lucid Towers), my default position is to use the VPN which connects me to the office. This gives me a secure tunnel to your office network (which is secured in itself) and means that any Internet-related on my laptop is encrypted and routed through the office. The means other people where I’m located can’t see or access (big disclaimer, no guarantees here – if people have the right tools and time, anything is breakable, anyone who tells you otherwise has their facts misplaced) what I’m doing – keeping me, and my laptop nice and secure. This is relatively cheap to set up and maintain, and given the security benefits, is well worth doing.

If I’m doing something not related to work, but I wanted an added level of protection (perhaps using personal Internet banking as an example), then I use Cyber Ghost VPN to connect to a secure VPN and route my traffic through their services. There is still that element of risk going via an external provider, but given the reputation and investment in their solution, at this moment in time, I’m comfortable with this.

In conclusion then, if you’re going to be using Wifi networks that you don’t maintain yourself (as in your home network), then you should definitely look to get a VPN setup, to keep you nice and secure (and your business for that matter).

Gavin Moorhouse is the owner of Lucid Computer Solutions, based in Redditch, Worcestershire, they provide VPN solutions amongst other things.