Mobile Phone Best Practices: Having a VPN
Source: Allison Reilly
Mobile devices will be king in 2012. Over half of professionals will be using a tablet or a smartphone as their primary computing device by the end of this year. With such widespread, and cardinal, use, security best practices for smartphones and other mobile phones is very important, Although Matt Cohen makes some excellent points about mobile phone best practices in his real estate technology blog, he fails to mention the value of a virtual private network, and how a VPN is better for public Wi-Fi use and data encryption.
What Cohen missed in his list of best practices is any way to protect the information that’s transmitted via mobile over public Wi-Fi networks. He mentions encryption as way to protect your information, and Kaspersky Lab’s as a tool that offers encryption, but this suggestion is misleading. Yes, Kaspersky will encrypt your data, but only what’s on your mobile phone. If you choose to email private information over a public Wi-Fi network, or to do check your bank account on the go, that information will not be encrypted when transmitted over the public network. Only a VPN can provide that kind of encryption and data security, and Kaspersky Lab does not provide VPN services. However, vendors like vpn4all.com and ocshield.com do.
Cohen emphasizes antivirus software for mobile phones, but viruses are not the main security problem regarding mobile phones. It’s the use of these unsecure public networks, and the access this grants cybercriminals to passwords and personal information. Malware is an increasing problem, but viruses aren’t the only type of malicious software that’s out there, and an antivirus program won’t protect against the spyware and Trojan horses out there as well. However, a virtual private network eliminates the unsecure network problem and guards against all types of malware, including viruses. A VPN also treats any hacker who tries to get unauthorized access into the network as malware and blocks that person. A VPN is simply a much better solution than any antivirus software.
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