Planning to go on vacation but still need to keep in touch with your colleagues in the office? One of the greatest sources of risk are public and hotel WiFi networks. We all know that they have their security issues, but most of us still use them for purposes that they’re not good for at all…

Find out whether you really have your company devices under control on your vacation

The holidays are here. The luckiest of us set up their Out of Office e-mail, close their company laptop, turn off access to company e-mail on their phone and off they go. But what about the others – who are probably in the majority? They will bring on their vacation at least one device that can access the company’s network. Do you belong to one of the former groups? Congratulations and enjoy your well-deserved rest! Are you perhaps one of the latter? And have you considered whether your devices are sufficiently secured and under control? For your vacation, you probably pack sunscreen, an insect repellent, a first aid kid in case something goes wrong, patches for blisters… But that’s all for you. What about your laptops, tablets and computers? They, too, are facing many risks on vacation! We don’t necessarily mean they could be destroyed, lost or stolen, even though such cases unfortunately are not rare. One of the greatest sources of risk are public and hotel wifi networks. We all know that they have their security issues, but most of us still use them for purposes that they’re not good for at all. Before you use your company computer, tablet or phone on vacation, try to answer these basic security questions to find out whether you really have these devices under control:

• Do I know whom from IT to contact if necessary? Will I find help if I need it?
• Is all my important data backed up in an independent and secure location?
• If someone gets hold of my device, can they connect to the corporate network and access its data?
• If someone gets hold of my data repositories (HDD, cards, USB etc.), will they have access to the data stored there? (You should know that accessing data on the hard drive of a laptop secured only by a Windows password is a matter of minutes!)
• Do I have at least some form of access protection on my devices? (On your laptop, you can use for example Microsoft Bitlocker to encrypt your user data and ideally also the functions Power on Password or HDD DriveLock)
• Do critical apps on my devices use two-step verification?
• Do I follow the principles of secure connection in unknown networks?

We’re the experts in IT security. We will be happy to design and implement a comprehensive security solution for your company for vacation time and beyond. Enjoy your summer and your vacation, wherever you go.