Summer Travel Tip: Work Safely From Public Wi-Fi

If you’re working on the go this summer, you probably are relying on public Wi-Fi networks to stay connected. It makes sense: When working from a hotel, coffee shop, or airport, taking advantage of a free network is both frugal and easy.

Trouble is, these networks haven’t always been safe and secure to use in the past. It used to be that, if you had important, sensitive, or private work to do, you were putting those things at risk by utilizing public Wi-Fi networks. You may have heard warnings about accessing your bank accounts when connected to public Wi-Fi networks, and the same could be said for dealing with private company matters over these connections. You might even shy away from public Wi-Fi because of it, opting to use your smartphone as a personal hotspot, or sticking with your smartphone itself and its cellular connection for all business needs.

While you should always be vigilant with your cybersecurity, and there is reason to be cautious when working on sensitive company tasks in public, there’s good news: Public Wi-Fi networks aren’t the threat they once were.

Public Wi-Fi is generally safe

Don’t take my word for it. That advice is coming straight from the Federal Trade Commission. As the FTC says, the issue with public Wi-Fi in the past was that most websites did not use encryption. That meant that your connection was available to anyone with the knowledge to access it. By connecting to a public Wi-Fi network, you opened your traffic up to both the network operator, as well as bad actors and hackers, who could do things like snoop on your bank account credentials.

Similarly, many public Wi-Fi connections themselves were not encrypted. Connecting to an unencrypted Wi-Fi network would mean transferring data over the air in plain text, something a bad actor could easily swoop in and intercept.

Nowadays, however, most websites do use encryption. That’s the “S” in HTTPS, which stands for “secure,” as opposed to the now much more uncommon HTTP. When a website uses encryption, the communications between your device and the site are scrambled. Only your device and the site can decrypt (unscramble) the encrypted data, which prevents bad actors from breaking in and stealing your information.

Public Wi-Fi networks can still be unencrypted, and you should take note of that when connecting to them. The network is encrypted if it asks for a WPA or WPA2 password, but if not, assume it is not encrypted. That can introduce risk, but encrypted websites reduce that risk considerably—even if hackers can theoretically monitor traffic on unencrypted public Wi-Fi networks, they still won’t be able to access the encrypted traffic between your device and the HTTPS site.

Steps you can take to be secure on public Wi-Fi

While public Wi-Fi networks are considerably safer today than they used to be, you’re not immune to cybersecurity incidents when connecting to them. As such, here are some golden rules for staying safe when connecting to public Wi-Fi networks:

• Always connect to HTTPS sites: encrypted websites will protect you from hacking even on public Wi-Fi. Look for that lock icon in your address bar, or “https” in the URL. If you don’t see the lock, or see HTTP, or even see a warning that the site you’re connecting to is not encrypted, don’t access it—even on a secure Wi-Fi network.
• Make sure you’re accessing the right site: When in doubt, don’t open links from emails or messages. Phishers create fake websites that look like the one you want to go to, but when you enter your login info, you hand it over to them. To protect against this, manually enter the URL yourself for each website you want to visit.
• Encrypt files before sharing them: If sharing sensitive Microsoft Office files like Word docs or Excel sheets, encrypt the file before sending it off. That way, only the users with the password will be able decrypt the file.