Reducing the Risks of Public Wi-Fi

It's becoming increasingly popular for enterprises to let employees use their own mobile devices—smartphones, tablets, even laptops—for work. But what are the risks when workers connect those devices to Wi-Fi hotspots? Significant, especially for the unwary.

On most public Wi-Fi networks, information sent to and from a mobile device is unencrypted. Anyone with a laptop and easily obtained sniffer software can access all the data moving over the wireless network.

Users may also connect to rogue Wi-Fi access points that can monitor the content of all transmissions. Neither is a huge problem for people streaming a movie from Netflix, but it certainly can be if they are doing business research or moving sensitive documents. Any unpatched vulnerabilities or other security holes can also be exploited by others on the same local network.