WATCH WiFi Security Risks – Day 13 of Cybersecurity Awareness Month 2021
Shelly Miller
Craig, if you could tell us about Wi Fi security risks?
Craig Taylor
Yes, Wi Fi is ubiquitous, it’s everywhere you go now, right? I have a Comcast account. And if I go to anyone else with a Comcast account, I can connect to their WiFi. By default, it’s outside of their network, but it’s still internet access. So WiFi proliferates everywhere, we all use it and depend on it every day. But there are a lot of hidden risks.
So let’s go over those public WiFi networks can really put your personal data at risk. Here’s how a fake network can be set up by a hacker, and they can name it the exact same thing or, or almost the same thing as the coffee shop you’re at. And if you connect to their fake WiFi network, that hacker is going to inspect all your traffic, anything that is unencrypted, they will see. Worse than that, if you’ve got sharing and other things enabled on your laptop or phone, they can push malware down to you and potentially infect your computer, and lead to remote compromise and theft of your data. So there’s some really dangerous things that can happen when you’re joining public WiFi, you need to know about that.
Shelly Miller
Okay, so a lot of security risks seem to go around a hacker taking advantage of looking like everything that you end up doing and using everyday like the WiFi network. So that’s a really, really good tip. So how do I how do I stay safe? while I’m on WiFi
Craig Taylor
Network, right? That’s the real key here and what the take home messages are for our watchers, or the people watching this is verified the connection to your WiFi network, ask the owner of the coffee shop, what is your WiFi called, and make sure you’re connecting to that network, not a look alike network.
Also, I would recommend that on public WiFi you avoid checking sensitive or critical applications like your banking, or paying bills online. Do that in the privacy of your own home on a network you trust. Turn off sharing on your device. This just invites a hacker to connect into your machine or your laptop or your or your phone and see what they can steal. In a worst case scenario if you’re traveling and you do have to log into a bank to do something important, consider getting a VPN that encrypts all the traffic from your device to the remote VPN, making it invisible to even a hackers private network that you might be connecting to. That’s a great security measure.
Lastly, it’s a really good idea to turn off all of these protocols like Bluetooth and WiFi, when you’re not using them. There have been known vulnerabilities in those protocols that even if you’re not using an actively but it’s enabled, they can break into your computer now we try to keep on top of those you should apply all the patches to your operating system to protect yourself, but turn it off if it’s not in use.
Shelly Miller
So by following these best practices, you can better protect yourself and your private data from theft and compromised so the message is become more aware to become more secure.
Craig Taylor
Yes, absolutely.
