In May of 2004, Stephen Cobb started a new job, with a company that provides broadband Internet access to business travelers. The company is Utah-based STSN, a name you may have noticed on those little network boxes you find in guest rooms at hotels with names like Marriott and Hilton. Started in 1998, STSN now provides more than 700,000 high speed Internet connections to travelers every month and delivers both wired and wireless services to over 1,850 conferences a month. More than 2,000 hotels in North America and Europe are currently serviced by STSN, about a third of them offering Wi-Fi service.

Stephen is now STSN’s Chief Security Executive. His job is to raise awareness of security issues surrounding mobile business connectivity and help STSN advance the security of its patented end-to-end network architecture. What attracted him to the job, apart from the opportunity to travel around the world talking to people and raising their security awareness, was STSN’s longstanding commitment to security, which has already resulted in a very robust system for delivering secure connections in a hostile environment.

By hostile I'm not implying that rocks and other missiles are flying through the air at your average business hotel, but a hotel does present some unique problems for computer connectivity. First of all, when you think about networking, you tend to think about sharing. After all, that’s why you installed a network at your home or office, to share files, printers, and maybe other resources like a high speed connection to the Internet. But when you fire up your laptop in a hotel room you probably don’t want to share your computer with the other guests.

What most business travelers want to do is get onto the Internet, often because that is the fastest route back to the company network, which is where their email messages and work data reside. A few years ago, those travelers used the laptop modem to dial up a remote access server (RAS) back at head office. While it was splendidly isolated from other computers, this type of direct laptop-to-server connection was often costly and always limited in terms of bandwidth, so the preferred option today is a broadband network connection to the Internet, within which you establish a temporary virtual private network (VPN) back to the company servers. However, you don’t want this connection exposed to the malicious people and code that lurk on networks, particularly on that network-of-networks, the Internet.

So you could say that what today’s hotel needs to provide to the business traveler is a network that doesn’t network, or rather, only networks in a highly controllable way. This is not your typical, off-the-shelf network. In fact, if you stay at a hotel that has installed a typical, off-the-shelf network, you will probably be able to see other guests’ laptops and, unless you have your own laptop tightly configured and individually firewalled, they will able to see yours (believe us, we have seen other guests’ computers at some pretty fancy hotels, and without using sophisticated hacking tools).

Needless to say, this is not how STSN does hotel Internet access. The network architecture used by STSN ensures that each hotel guest who uses the system gets a separate connection, one that is protected, by STSN hardware and software, all the way to the Internet via an STSN-controlled "Point of Presence."

To make it easier for business travelers to keep their data safe while they are on the road, the stsn.com web site has a handy locator to help you find a suitable hotel. The site also gives some security suggestions for laptops that are being used on the road:

* Disable file-sharing to prevent strangers accessing your hard drive.

* Disable the peer-to-peer and ad-hoc capabilities of the Wi-Fi system.

* Install and use a personal firewall.

* Make sure the anti-virus software on your laptop is active and up-to-date.

* Use either a VPN for email or, if you are using POP email, use SSH, or use SSL-protected web mail.

Here are some additional tips:

* Regularly scan your laptop for adware and spyware.

* Install available security patches for your operating system and applications.

* Don't connect to wireless networks that don't ask you to log on (unless you are sure you know who is running the network).

* Don't pay for wireless network connectivity with a credit card unless you are sure you know who is running the network, and make sure that the transaction page is SSL encrypted.

If your company hasn’t already installed a firewall on your laptop there are two that I can recommend, Zone Alarm and Sygate Personal Firewall, both of which are free (for personal use) in their basic versions. There is also a free firewall included in Windows XP called Internet Connection Firewall of ICF. You can turn ICF on and off via the Advanced tab in the Properties setting of whatever network connection you are using (the next major update to Windows XP is rumored to turn ICF on by default but if you use your laptop to VPN to your company’s network, you may want to ask support before you use ICF, or any other firewall, in case it interferes with the VPN).

One Chey tip is to test your laptop before you travel. You can do this at either of these web sites: scan.sygatetech.com or www.grc.com (click on "Shields Up"). Both sites are safe and will tell you how exposed your system might be).