An Internet café is a public location that sells Internet access, often by the minute. The café will often sell typical café items such as coffee and sandwiches. However, with the explosion of wireless in recent years, many eateries provide free wireless Internet access to bring in customers. For example, many coffee shop and restaurant locations provide free Wi-Fi.

The challenge when using an Internet café or even an open wireless connection at an eatery is security. Others in the local area may be able to view data in the connection unless it is encrypted. Because the majority of Internet traffic is not encrypted, attackers may be able to gain valuable information by capturing another user’s Internet use.

The owner of the Internet café can capture any data that passes through with a free packet sniffer such as Wireshark. Additionally, many free wireless sniffers are available that an attacker can use over a shared wireless connection to capture all of the traffic. Any system on the wireless network has access to the traffic on that network.

An alternative is to use an Internet café VPN connection. As soon as you connect with the Internet café or the wireless connection, you would connect to the Internet café VPN. This would be hosted at your organization. It will encrypt all the traffic and prevent any sniffing attacks.

For example, ExpressVPN is a product your organization can purchase and use as an Internet café VPN connection. Once you set it up, you can direct your users to connect to it for all Internet access, including from their smartphones.