More often than not, we find ourselves in desperate need to access some internet and we can’t resist using some public or unknown unsecured network.

Is it safe to use the unsecured network?

The answer to this question is that, it is not completely safe to use these unsecured networks, however by taking the necessary precautions one can connect securely to an unknown network.

Though it is not possible to achieve absolute security, the goal of network security is to make is extremely difficult for one to get exposed to security threats. Currently, computers and other devices, such as PDAs and smart phones can access connect to unsecured Wi-Fi wireless networks in most of the public places such as airports, coffee shops, hotel lounge making it easier for hackers to access private information and data of unsuspecting internet users.

An un-secured network is a network that has no security protocols or has outdated security protocols. The risks one is exposed to when connecting to an unidentified unsecure network; be it wireless or cable include; malicious insertion, network imitations and threat from network scanners among others.

This simply means that by using these networks, users are leaking sensitive information to hackers with special tool to access it. Such information may include passwords of the sender, personal addresses of the sender and receiver, and other sensitive personal information such as bank accounts.

Exemplar

To further elaborate this situation, take an example when mailing a letter, one places the letter in the mailbox which the mailman later picks and delivers to the recipient.

A malicious attack in this case would involve an unauthorized individual who is not an employee of the post office, accessing or intercepting the letter before it could get picked up the mailman. As such, the attacker could do whatever he pleases with the contents of the letter; he could read the contents, change the content, and even destroy the letter. Similarly, this is what is likely to happen when one does not take precaution while using an unsecured network.

All hope is not lost

However, all hope is not lost, there are security measures one can take when using to an open and unsecure network. There are two instances: connecting to an unknown network using your own device and when using an unknown device.

Such tools that come in handy in these instances are Https & Https everywhere. Https encrypts sensitive data using SSL/TLS. Thus, when accessing websites enter https instead of http; this will encrypt and decrypts login information, user page requests and other web pages that are returned by the Web server thus protecting man-in-the-middle and eavesdropping attacks.

Https Everywhere is a slightly advanced Https technology that uses a whitelist of sites or rather major sites that we use to access other sites such as Google, Wikipedia and popular social networks by automatically activating inbuilt security of these sites.

Another effective method is the use of Virtual Private Network (VPN) which makes the unidentified networks function as a single logical unit thus making it possible to easily monitor, secure/encrypt this point. Moreover, users should always implement more secure practices when accessing such kind of networks.

Such practices include use of unique and strong passwords, use of two-step authentication where possible, keeping the firewall active, turning off file and printer sharing, visiting strictly secure sites, use secure web applications and finally limiting the time periods connected to the network.

When using an unknown device the above mentioned tools and security practices apply other than not using weak passwords and configuring firewalls.

A more secure solution is to use a flash disk or a USB external hard drive mounted with a bootable operating system such as Linux OS, which separates the web operations from operations of the device thus creating a secure environment for the user.

Eric Gichuru

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Eric Gichuru