When employees connect to public Wi-Fi networks (such as those found in coffee shops and airports), the greatest threat to their data security is the possibility of a man-in-the-middle (MitM) attack. In a MitM scenario, a malicious actor intercepts and potentially manipulates data packets traveling between the user's device and the intended destination, often without the user’s knowledge.
A VPN (Virtual Private Network) reduces this risk by encrypting all data traveling between the user’s device and the VPN server. This encryption ensures that even if an attacker manages to intercept the data, it will be indecipherable without the proper encryption keys. As a result, the sensitive company information remains secure, mitigating the risk of eavesdropping, tampering, or data theft that can occur over insecure public networks.
A) Masking the User’s True IP Address
While hiding the user’s IP address can add a layer of privacy and prevent some forms of targeted attacks, it doesn’t inherently stop a MitM attack. Even if the attacker doesn’t know your original IP, if they can still intercept your plaintext data on the local network, they can do harm. IP masking alone doesn’t encrypt the data or verify its integrity.
B) Bypassing Geographical Restrictions
Some users employ VPNs to access content not available in their region. While this is a useful feature for certain business scenarios (e.g., testing region-specific websites), it doesn’t add any security against MitM attacks. Geographical spoofing is purely about content accessibility, not data protection.
C) Compressing Data for Efficiency
Data compression can reduce bandwidth usage, which might improve performance and lower costs, but it has no meaningful impact on security. Compressed data, if sent without encryption, can still be intercepted and analyzed. Compression by itself does nothing to thwart a MitM attacker.