Should staff use personal devices for work while traveling?

Generally no. Personal devices outside your management controls cannot be wiped, audited, or revoked cleanly. If unavoidable, require web-only access through MFA-enforced cloud apps and never allow downloads.

Are hotel business-center computers safe for printing or quick email checks?

Treat them as compromised by default. Never log into anything sensitive. If you must print, use a one-time print code from your phone or a cloud print service that does not require a login on the kiosk.

Does my cyber insurance cover a laptop stolen on a business trip?

Cyber policies typically cover the breach response and notification costs, not the hardware. Property insurance handles the device. Verify both with your broker — and confirm encrypted-laptop carve-outs that may reduce your notification obligations after a theft. See our guidance on cyber insurance requirements in Washington.

Should we restrict international travel for staff with administrative access?

For domain admins, finance staff, and anyone with broad privileged access, yes — at minimum, require pre-travel review and consider issuing a clean travel device. This is a small operational friction with a large risk reduction.

How Should Small Businesses Handle Cybersecurity for Summer Travel?

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Small businesses should handle summer travel cybersecurity by enforcing multi-factor authentication on every account, requiring encrypted remote access (VPN or zero trust) on company devices, locking down accounts and devices before staff leave, and setting clear expectations about border crossings and public Wi-Fi. Most of the hype around travel hacking is overstated in 2026 — the real risks are stolen laptops, careless logins, phishing while distracted, and devices searched at the border.

What Actually Goes Wrong on Business Travel?

Travel cybersecurity content has been recycled for a decade, and most of it has not aged well. Here is what the data and the real incidents actually say:

Lost and stolen devices remain the most common travel incident. Airport lounges, taxis, hotel lobbies, and rental cars are where laptops disappear. A stolen laptop without full-disk encryption is a data breach.
Phishing while traveling is more effective than phishing at the desk. Tired, jet-lagged, distracted people on phone screens click things they would not click in the office. The Verizon 2025 DBIR consistently flags the human element as the leading factor in breaches.
Account takeover through credential reuse. A travel-related account (a hotel loyalty site, a sketchy Wi-Fi captive portal) gets breached, the password is reused, and your Microsoft 365 tenant is suddenly exposed.
Border device searches. U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported 55,318 electronic device searches in FY2025, the vast majority basic. Other countries have broader authority.

Is Public Wi-Fi Still Dangerous in 2026?

This is the area most travel-security advice gets wrong. The old warning was “never use public Wi-Fi without a VPN” because attackers could sit on the network and read your traffic. That threat existed when most of the web ran on unencrypted HTTP.

In 2026, virtually every legitimate site and business application uses HTTPS by default. The traffic to your bank, your Microsoft 365 tenant, your CRM — all encrypted before it ever leaves your laptop. A coffee shop Wi-Fi snooper sees the destination, not the content.

That said, public Wi-Fi is still worth treating with caution:

Captive portals can be spoofed. A “Free Airport Wi-Fi” SSID may not be the airport’s network. Once you connect, malicious DNS or a fake login page can do real damage.
Some apps still mishandle certificates. Not every business app validates HTTPS correctly. A VPN or ZTNA tunnel is a useful backstop.
Your device announces itself on the local network. Disable file sharing, AirDrop to “Contacts Only,” and printer discovery before you connect.

The honest 2026 answer: use your phone’s cellular hotspot when convenient, use VPN or ZTNA when you must use public Wi-Fi, and stop worrying that someone in seat 14B is reading your email.

What About Juice-Jacking at Airport USB Ports?

You will see breathless warnings about “juice-jacking” — attackers using compromised public USB ports to steal data or install malware. The FBI and FCC have both issued advisories about it.

Here is the honest assessment: documented in-the-wild juice-jacking attacks against random travelers are vanishingly rare. The threat is real in principle, the prevention is trivial, and the warnings get reposted every summer because they are easy clicks.

The fix takes about three dollars:

Use a USB data blocker (a small dongle that passes power but blocks data pins).
Or carry your own wall charger and use the AC outlet.
Or charge from your own laptop, not the kiosk.

Do not skip the prevention. Just do not lose sleep over it either.

What Should Happen Before an Employee Leaves?

A travel-ready device is a configured device. Before staff travel for work — especially internationally — your IT process should cover:

Patch and update. Operating system, browser, business apps. Patches do not happen in airport terminals.
Verify full-disk encryption is on. BitLocker on Windows, FileVault on macOS. A stolen encrypted laptop is a lost asset. A stolen unencrypted laptop is a notification letter to clients.
Confirm MFA is enrolled on the device, not just an SMS. Use an authenticator app or hardware key. SMS codes do not work well overseas.
Review what is on the device. If a laptop does not need access to your full client database to complete the trip, it should not have that access.
Test remote wipe. Your endpoint management should be able to wipe a lost device. Confirm it works before you need it.
Backup recently. Cloud-replicated backups should be current. See our backup testing guidance.

How Should You Handle Border Crossings?

This is the most consequential question for business travelers and the one most companies have not thought through. CBP and equivalent agencies in other countries can compel travelers to unlock devices at the border. Refusal can result in detention, device seizure, or denial of entry — and for U.S. citizens, the leverage is asymmetric.

A few practical guardrails:

Travel with the minimum. A clean laptop with only the applications needed for the trip is much harder to compromise than a daily driver with seven years of email cached locally.
Sign out of sensitive accounts before approaching the border. Logged-out sessions still expose tokens, but the friction is meaningfully higher.
Use cloud-based access patterns. If client data lives in your tenant and the laptop is essentially a thin client, a device search reveals less.
Know your company policy. Decide in advance whether staff comply, refuse, or escalate. The CISA travel guidance is the authoritative U.S. starting point.

For executives and staff with sensitive client information, talk to legal counsel before international travel. This is risk management, not paranoia.

How Do You Handle Travel for a 10-to-50-Person Business?

You do not need an enterprise mobility budget. You do need the basics in place before someone is at SeaTac with an hour to spare:

Conditional access policies that flag impossible travel and unusual locations.
MFA enforced on every cloud account (Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace).
Encrypted laptops with remote wipe.
A documented travel checklist staff actually follow.
An incident response plan that includes “device lost overseas.”

ROI Technology helps Snohomish County and Western Washington businesses prepare staff and devices before they board the plane — not after the laptop disappears. Talk to us about travel-ready IT or call (888) 707-3652.