InfoWorld’s “When In China, Don’t Leave Your Laptop Alone”
I recently spoke with InfoWorld about the increased risk of cyber crimes when traveling abroad. The reporter talked with multiple security experts and came up with a great list of tips to protect your information when you travel.
At KoolSpan we deal with clients who have personally experienced overseas hacking on business trips. These travelers will often run into the mobile security problems, including countries monitoring their communication. There are increased security risks when you’re overseas. Your SIM will show up as an international SIM once you register to the other country’s network, letting that country know you are an international traveler.
How You Can Protect Yourself Against Overseas Cyber Crime
- Purchase a temporary device that you can wipe clean or dispose of after your trip.
- Password protection will mitigate hacking, but information can still be booted from a USB drive to another device. To fully protect your device from this, you should implement full drive encryption.
- If your mobile device has a removable battery, disconnecting it from the device can protect your data.
- Don’t just turn your phone off, the phone will remain on a low level to keep it alive to the cell tower and can be turned on remotely. If you must take your own device, take out your battery when you are not using your phone.
- Never leave your device unattended, even if it means taking your laptop bag with you to the bathroom.
- Take advantage of built-in features for laptops. Windows computers include BitLocker, which encrypts the whole hard-drive. Mac’s FileVault automatically encrypts your home folder’s contents while you’re using them, but it has to be turned on by the user
To see more encryption advice from my interview with InfoWorld on cyber crime, please read When in China, don’t leave your laptop alone.
