Road Trip Tip: Connecting to Your Data While on the Move

Trip data

• Days: 21
• Flights: 14
• Miles traveled: 23,013
• Current location: Oranjestad, Aruba
• Next Stop: Castries, St. Lucia

Recap

Following a rough trip to and from Bogota, I finally made it to Boston via Orlando. Arriving in Boston haggard after 14 hours of traveling and detention by Colombian and US Customs officials, I made the decision to kill the 13 hours until my flight to Aruba in the airport. I staked out a quiet and power-accessible spot near the gate and went to work. Around 11pm, I was ousted by a security guard and told to move into the main concourse. Luckily, I had staked out available camping spots on SleepinginAirports.com and decided on setting up shop in a rocking chair in a hallway connecting two concourses. Unable to get any shut-eye in an upright position in the bright, cold and noisy hallway, I resorted to watching movies on my iPad until 2am.

On the hunt for a restroom at 2:30am, I ran across a food court that was not barricaded off like every other eating establishment. Dark, quiet and filled with long benches, I had hit the airport camping jackpot. I laid down with my travel pillow and was unconscious within seconds. That didn’t last long, though, since the morning crew showed up at 4:30, flipped on the million-watt lights and started blasting Def Leppard over the sound system. I tried to sleep through the commotion but was given the boot by a foot court employee along with three other blurry-eyed travelers.

Stumbling through the terminal, I felt as though I had been dragged behind a truck from Columbia and was in dire need of some personal maintenance to freshen up. I ducked into a restroom to brush my teeth, change my clothes and wash my face, all the while feeling like a hobo. “Screw it,” I thought. My goal had been to embrace this whole vagabond entrepreneur thing, and freshening up in an airport bathroom after spending the night in a foot court seemed to be part of the drill. Fresh as a daisy, I darted off to the gate to meet my wife Cynthia, and we jetted off to Aruba together.

The Tip: Connecting to your data while on the move

As we discussed in a prior post, a vagabond digital entrepreneur needs to maintain access to his or her data while on the road. We talked about powering your device, but two other elements are still required: data storage and access to that data. In this post, let’s tackle connecting to cloud-based data.

Before that, though, I feel compelled to throw in a disclaimer: Although I run an IT company, I am not a skilled network technician. I have just found what works for me through trial and lots of error.

How to find a connection

The first step to connecting to the internet and to your data is obviously finding an available network. There are several ways that you can scan for and connect to wireless hotspots while on the move:

1. Use your laptop, cellphone, iPad or other wireless device to scan for available, non-password protected WiFi networks. Networks that are locked with WEP or other pre-shared keys are marked with a padlock and will be unaccessible without the key.
2. Use a WiFi finder device to detect hotspots. There are a number of devices available that you can use to detect WiFi hotspots, obviating the need to turn on your laptop or other wireless device. Most WiFi finders come in a key chain or credit-card shaped form and notify you of WiFi signals using a series of LED lights to show you the signal strength. Some of these devices will also notify you if the detected network is password protected.
3. Use web services like JWire to find available hotspots before traveling. Simply enter your destination into the application, and it will spit out a list of free and paid WiFi hotspots.
4. Find the nearest Starbucks or McDonalds. Most, if not all, Starbucks and McDonalds branches across the US and around the world have free WiFi available for their customers.

Making a connection

When it comes to accessing the Internet when you’re away from home, you never really know what you’re going to get in the way of speed, reliability or security. You would be shocked to learn how easy it is to capture unsecured wireless data or to access someone’s computer on a public WiFi connection. It does not take a lot to protect your data from exploitation, so take the time to plan out how you will stay secure and protect yourself and your valuable confidential data while traveling.

Three easy steps to securing your connection

1. When connecting to public WiFi, don’t automatically accept the first available hotspot. Look for one that comes from a legitimate source.
2. Run firewall software when using a public network. All new computers running Windows or Mac OS X come with some sort of firewall software. Make sure you have yours enabled.
3. Install and use a Virtual Private Network. This is probably the single most important step you can take.

The Virtual Private Network (VPN)

A VPN protects your data by creating an encrypted tunnel between your computer and a wireless internet access point and sending all your data down that tunnel. This prevents others in the vicinity from intercepting your data before it hits the access point and makes data traveling through the network to the internet useless to hackers. Without a VPN, everything you broadcast can be captured by other computers in the vicinity, and you leave your computer open to being accessed directly by users on the same network. With a VPN, all of your transmitted data is encrypted and immune to exploitation.

VPNs come in free and paid services and self-hosted devices. Here are a few you may want to check out, if you are interested in using a VPN.

Free VPN Services:

• Hamachi: Windows only. Hamachi claims to be a zero-configuration VPN and is free for personal use. I found the software to be fairly easy to install and set up, but, since I travel with a Mac, it is useless for me.
• Hotspot Shield: Compatible with Mac or Windows machines. The installed program creates a VPN for your browsing sessions but is ad-supported. It is an excellent free option, if you can stand the ads.
• OpenVPN: An open source VPN solution that is cross-platform compatible. If you are technically oriented and want to set up your own VPN using your home computers, this might be the ticket for you.

Paid VPN Services:

• StrongVPN: Cross-platform compatible (Mac, Windows, Linux) and robust VPN service. This is my VPN of choice, and I’ve tried a bunch of them. I have never had a signal drop off with StrongVPN, although I have experienced problems connecting to the PPTP (standard VPN protocol) in some countries where the ISP blocked the VPN. Luckily, StrongVPN has a remedy in the form of a pre-packaged OpenVPN configuration. I found the instructions for set-up easy to follow, but changing from a PPTP to OpenVPN must be done over an unsecured connection.
• PublicVPN: Another cross-platform compatible service. I used it for one of my international trips and found the service to be pretty good. I never had problems connecting but found the VPN speeds to be a bit lacking compared to StrongVPN.

VPN Devices:

• IronKey: I have an IronKey and think it’s the best thing since sliced bread. It is an encrypted USB flash drive that protects any files stores on it and that comes with its own VPN software and a Firefox browser that runs automatically when you plug it into a Windows PC. This means that you can plug the IronKey into a shared computer, surf with the installed browser and not have to worry about keystroke loggers or other malicious software exploiting your data.
• VPN appliance: These devices are expensive and complicated to set up. My company has a VPN device installed on our network to protect our sensitive data and to provide remote workers access. Setting up a hosted VPN device is far beyond the needs of most independent professionals but may be something to consider as your business grows.

A VPN will not guarantee data protection when traveling and using public WiFi, but it significantly reduces the chances that your valuable data will be exploited. Combined with a modicum of care when selecting wireless networks and running firewall software, you will make your data significantly more difficult to capture or hack, especially when compared to your wireless brethren, many of whom take none of those protective steps.