Conference Wifi Security Tips

If you’re like me now, you discovered that the conference you’re at right now has free wifi. Security over wireless internet is not only ideal, it’s vital to protect your audience. I can’t stress enough that security is an expectation that conference attendees need to expect.

Pictured below is an example of 25 seconds of monitoring the connection. A criminal or someone with more malicious intent could effortless jump into your Facebook, Gmail, Twitter, Amazon and wreck some havoc. This is the danger of free wifi:

This is done with a tool (free) known as Firesheep. I explained this in-depth about it on my work blog not too long ago. I highly, highly suggest everyone reads it.

So, if you’re reading this, you need to do the following things to secure your Internet connection:

• Clear your cache and cookies in your browsers. They may be used later without your knowledge.
• Connect to your sites via HTTPS/SSL. That means using https://www… of your favorite sites.
• Use Twitter API apps, they use SSL authentication and aren’t easily decrypted.
• If you have to sign into a service insecurely, sign out quickly. Signing out of many services today will invalidate your cookies from others’ being able to use them.
• If at all possible, choose a connection that has a WPA code. This helps increase the trust of the network.
• Limit any and all sensitive communications or activity on an insecured network. (Twitter, Facebook, Blog, etc.)

The alternative to using a free, insecure wifi connection is to bring your own. Use a 3G/4G dongle with your favorite wireless service. It will also prevent your account from being hijacked.

To prevent this, free wifi distributors need to do two things: secure your network with WPA and lock it down with AP-Isolation. That’s pretty much it. The other side of the problem is on the providers to enforce end-to-end security with every web-based transaction.

Cool? Pass this along to others using the free wifi at your conference.

Image credit: chego101

Tagged as: Advice, Conference, Event, hacking, Internet Security, Security, social media, Tips, Wifi, wireless