OStatic

6 Easy Ways to Secure Your Hotspot Sessions

Are you increasingly using public Wi-Fi hotspots? If you are, you're in good company, as many more people use public Wi-Fi for work and play. Airports, coffee shops, hotel lobbies, conference centers and many more types of locations are Wi-Fi enabled. Many hotspot hotspot users, though, don't take the right steps to secure their sessions. In this post, you'll find six tips and applications--including both open source and freeware offerings--that you can use to lock down your sessions.

Use a VPN. One of the most common tools that users of hotspots neglect to use is a Virtual Private Network (VPN) application. It’s ironic, because good VPN software is free, and once you’ve installed one, entering one password can put what you’re doing in a secure tunnel. I’ve posted before about my favorite solution OpenVPN, but there are many others. OpenVPN is a long-standing open source project that provides full SSL VPN security, and I’ve found it to be the top tool in my hotspot security arsenal.

Don’t Forget the Firewall. Firewall software, for blocking hackers and other threats, exists within both Windows and Mac OS X. The firewall built into Mac OS X is actually very good. Windows users who want to find a good, free open source solution can go with FirewallPAPI, and Linux users should look into Bastion-Firewall.

Use Firefox. Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser is a prime target for hackers and the Mozilla Firefox browser is renowned for its security features. This is an easy way to boost the security of your hotspot sessions.

Get Smart With Passwords. Are you overwhelmed by the number of passwords you have to manage? Hand off the problem to KeePass Password Safe. It runs on all popular platforms, including mobile platforms, where it's handy to have a password manager. It encrypts your passwords and lets you unlock them with one touch. This is good to keep on a USB key.

Encrypt Your Missives. Many users of encryption software gripe about how difficult the applications are to use. Axcrypt rebels against this state of affairs. It's for Windows users, and you can simply right-click on a file to encrypt it, and double-click the file to decrypt it. This is one of the best tools for simple encryption.

Use Antivirus Software. I left this tip for last since it's so obvious. The good news is that there are several good free, open source antivirus applications available. My favorite, becasue it is so regularly updated, is ClamWin Antivirus. You can find many alternatives to this application and all the applications discussed here by searching our database of over 150,000 open source applications here at OStatic.

• firefox
• Windows
• Internet Explorer
• linux
• OpenVPN
• FirewallPAPI
• passwords
• keepass

Share Your Comments