The trouble with laptops

Walk into your local coffee shop or favorite lunch place and you’ll see laptops and "netbooks" at practically every table. Welcome to the wireless world! A world, unfortunately, that is fraught with danger, where corporate and personal information can be stolen right out from under your keyboard. The reason? Most wireless "hotspots" use weak or no encryption/security. While this makes it easy for you to connect, it also makes it easy for hackers to spy on you. And once you’re online at your favorite WiFi hotspot, hackers can quietly probe your computer, stealing passwords, data — even your identity. But things are not as dire as this scenario makes it seem. Hackers can be stopped if you use a firewall. But you need to be selective. Some firewalls are almost (but not quite) more trouble than they're worth with constant popups and alerts and the dramatic performance slowdown they inflict on your system. The best plan, then, may be to turn to an expert to help you select and properly configure a solution. At Qbase, for example, our engineers can configure personal firewall solutions for your mobile workforce that strike a delicate balance between restrictive and functional. In fact, in most cases you won’t even know the firewall is working. But all of those frustrated hackers will...