Wifi Security

I was reading Robert Scoble's blog tonight and saw a post regarding Wifi security, or lack thereof. Someone told him that if you are sitting in a coffee shop, someone next to you can sniff your traffic and see what you are typing on IM, etc.

This is not new news. Perhaps some people didn't realize that IM messages are sent as plain text, but most people know that wireless traffic can, in many cases, be sniffed.

I've always dealt with this in a simple way: I am always connected to my corporate VPN, so all of my traffic is encrypted across the wireless network.

Let me explain in more detail:

When you connect to a VPN (virtual private network), all of your data is encrypted between your computer and the VPN server. In my case, my VPN server is located at my office. There is no way for someone to sniff my traffic over WiFi (or a wire) and see what is flowing between my computer and my VPN server. Once my traffic reaches my VPN server, it is on my corporate network and it gets to the internet from there. In essence I am "at" work with regards to traffic that goes to the internet. I am bridged from whatever location I am really at, into my office. That's the purpose of a VPN. It connects you into your network as if you were physically there.

The first thing my computer does when it connects to a Wifi network is to connect to my VPN. This ensures that all of my traffic is encrypted. Technically there is a small performance penalty for this because traffic has to "bounce" through my offfice, but it's a small price to pay for security.