Secure & private connections to Yale while traveling

With wireless networking on laptops and smartphones, and with public or commercial wireless ("Wi-Fi") network services in most airports and hotels, connecting to your Yale email and resources has never been easier. However, public wireless networks have become major targets for identity thieves and other computer criminals.

Before you travel, work with your local support provider to be sure your laptop and/or smartphone is set up for secure connections to Yale.

A few basic precautions can assure that you won't become a target for cybercriminals while you travel:

1. Prior  to traveling determine whether your computer contains any 3-lock data.
2. Perform a data scan to identify the nature and location of potentially confidential information such as Social Security or credit card numbers.
3. Ensure your operating system is fully patched. 
4. Be sure your antivirus software has the latest virus definition updates.
5. Third party software should also be updated (i.e. Adobe).
6. It is strongly recommended the VPN client is used when access any Yale resource.

Securely connecting to Yale services

A VPN connection using a Yale Managed Workstation machine is your best means of assuring that your Yale business (and other online work) is secure and private, and cannot be accessed by other people on a public wireless network.

To connect to your email via the Web:

Yale webmail access points all use SSL/TLS security and encryption to provide a fairly secure and private connection to your Yale email even if you must use a public computer to access your email (at a conference, for instance), or if you cannot set up a VPN connection to the Internet while you are traveling.

Related topics

• Yale Virtual Private Network
• Yale Managed Workstation Program
• Accessing Yale resources from home and while traveling
• Support providers at Yale
• Getting technology help at Yale