Protecting Your Data At Conferences

In less than two weeks, we will mark the start of the PASS 2019 Summit. The annual conference of fellow data nerds, SQL Server geeks, family and friends. It is a week that many of us often look forward to. As we ramp up to this event, you will find bloggers that will post about the event such as places to eat, how to get around, things to do, or places to go site see. This is great information to have, however, in this post, I want to talk about something else.

Data Security. More specifically, your data security and what you can do to help protect it.

Let’s face it. Data breaches happen all the time. When you get a large crowd together in the same place, it could be considered a smorgasbord for hackers and data thieves. As much as I’d like to think that my fellow data professionals wouldn’t hack my data, it happens unfortunately

So, let’s talk about a few things you can do to help keep your data safe.

Like any large conference, there will be WiFI available for conference attendees. Most folks don’t think about it, but data thieves love free WiFi. In order to counter-act them, I am a huge proponent of utilizing a VPN service. This could be one that you built yourself or there are several VPN services that can be purchased at a monthly cost. I built my own VPN server in Azure (or I use the one we have for the company) but purchasing one is definitely an option.

Make sure to consider your phone as well and not just your laptop. I’ve configured my phone to utilize my VPN so that when I am using my phone on a free wireless network, I can ensure that my connection to the internet is as secure as possible. Taking the time to ensure all your devices can utilize a VPN will help ensure your data is secure.

I’ve always been paranoid about plugging in my phone or any USB device into an unknown port, including the USB ports offered in most modern hotels. You do not really know where that port might be plugged into (unless you can trace the wires) and if you don’t know where/what it’s plugged into, you don’t know what might have access to your device. Even modern aircraft will provide USB ports for you to plug your phone in to charge during flight. Do you know where that port goes? I don’t. So since I don’t know where that port really goes, I rarely use any USB port on flights instead using deferring to us a regular AC outlet to charge my device.