Business Travelers at Risk of Identity Theft

previously published February 29, 2008

A recent study by Airtight, an intrusion prevention systems vendor, looked at the risks business travelers face when using unsecured wireless phones and laptops while in airports.

They found that only 3% of travelers were using a VPN (virtual private network) to encrypt their connection. The rest were simply sending usernames, passwords, and other business and personal data across ad-hoc networks.*

This information can be easily captured resulting in identity theft of online accounts, other personal data.

And, if online with a company laptop, can even put the office network at risk of information theft.

Airtight also performed diagnostics on the laptops in the 14 airports where they conducted their investigation and found many of them were infected with viral peer-to-peer Wi-Fi.**

*An Ad-hoc network is a temporary "network" formed by communicating stations in a wireless LAN. **Wi-Fi is the common name for a popular wireless technology used in home networks, mobile phones, video games and more.

An infected computer allows a remote malicious user access to your computer allowing the delivery of spam in the most innocuous case up to and including identity theft and other illegal activity.