BBC Watchdog's Wi-Fi insecurities can easily be countered says IronKey
An in-depth report on BBC TV's Watchdog consumer affairs programme on Thursday evening (http://preview.tinyurl.com/ykps7tm) revealed how insecure thousands of UK's Wi-Fi hotspots really are.
Colin Woodland, EMEA director of field operations with IronKey, highlights that many easy to use solutions exist to counter the problem.
“Entertaining though the Watchdog programme was, I think they got it wrong when they said that securing a laptop Wi-Fi session was technically tricky. Laptop security technology is no longer the domain of the techies as the technology is now easy to install and use for most laptop users.
"The WatchDog report referred to technically complex systems such as virtual private networks (VPNs) being a solution to the problem of Wi-Fi session eavesdropping and interception, but many solutions are a lot simpler than that," he said.
Laptop Wi-Fi users simply need to use technologies such as a secured and trusted web browser, hardware based session encryption, virtual keyboards and two factor authentication or similar authentication technologies to ensure you - and only you - can log into a Web-based email session, with no chance of being intercepted" he added.
According to the secure flash drive specialist's director, whilst VPNs are technically complex to set up, the use of private secure session’s technology and strong authentication technologies are easy to use and will help to make it impossible for the man-in-the-middle type of attack shown on Watchdog.
Using a trusted and self contained web browser which is stored on a flash drive and securely encrypted until needed means that it cannot be tampered with to install malware or spyware.
Virtual keyboards - where a simple software plug-in to the Web browser allows users to tap in their IDs, passwords and other critical information by `clicking out' letters and numbers on the computer's screen, rather than the keyboard - are always an excellent security option on any machine where there is a chance of malware being installed said Mr Woodland.
The use of a plug-in USB Hardware based encryption (https://www.ironkey.com/demo-personal) or similar technology, meanwhile - using a true random number generator and very secure hardware based encryption to outfox would-be data thieves - can also be used to secure an online session, he went on to say.
"These simple to use security building blocks can help to ensure that laptop and netbook data sessions - no matter what the underlying data technology is being used - are secure from prying eyes," he concluded.
For more on the BBC TV Watchdog Wi-Fi security revelations: http://preview.tinyurl.com/ykps7tm
For more on IronKey: www.ironkey.com
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