The risks you face when travelling with sensitive data continue to expand as malicious code moves from your desktop and onto your smart phone. However, you are not powerless to act. Read on to see how you can make your next business trip safe and secure.

The latest research from AVG makes for stark reading if you are about to visit a country that has a high level of potential hacker threat, or computer virus attack. According to AVG you are most likely to fall victim of a cyber attack if you access the Internet in Caucasus region, with web surfers in Turkey, Russia, Armenia and Azerbaijan all being the most likely to face threats while online.

According to AVG spokesperson, Roger Thomson, "Our research tells us a lot about the behavior of web surfers worldwide. Internet users in Turkey, Russia, the Caucasus and South-east Asia for example show disproportionately higher rates of being attacked than the global average of 1 in 73. Our research should also serve as a wake-up call to people going abroad. If you are travelling without your computer and use a public machine or borrow a friend or colleagues, ensure that when accessing web-based services like email that you log out and close the browser when you have finished your session. If you are taking your laptop with you ensure you have backed up your data and removed any sensitive information from your machine."

What's more, research has suggested that more than 12,000 laptops are lost in US airport alone each week with a quarter of all PC users suffering a loss of data each year. With these statistics in mind, ensuring your computers, data peripherals and your smart phone are protected from malicious code is now imperative for all business travelers. More worrying is the rises of hacking techniques such as key logging that can covertly record your every keystroke. It is vitally important to ensure your computers are free from these infections when you are travelling. Having up-to-date virus and malicious code security software installed can help you combat these threats.

Getting protection

Clearly the issue for business travellers is how much sensitive data do you actually take with you on your next trip? Your individual requirements will have to be taken into consideration, but the general advice is to travel with as little sensitive data as possible.

There is of course a trend emerging where data is accessed remotely via the cloud. It is vitally important that you take adequate precautions to protect your data if you access it in this way. Your VPN should be able to fend off all but the most robust of virus and hacker attacks, but as British Airways point out, most of the malicious code that gets onto computers these days comes via installed software. Never install any new applications while you're on your business trip. Your IT department should thoroughly test any application before it makes it onto the notebook PC you will take on your trip.

Looking at the desktop, anti-virus software has had several decades to evolve to the point where it can deliver a high level of protection. For small business users their first port of call will most likely be Microsoft Security Essentials that is now available for the SME sector. The other major data security suppliers including Kaspersky, Sophos, McAfee and Symantec that all have small business and enterprise level packages that have evolved to offer comprehensive and robust data protection from virus, spam threats and malware of all kinds.

What is clear is that all business travellers can't rely on their anti-virus software to auto update in the background to keep their computers safe and secure. Certainly this feature should be activated, but you ought to also get into the habit of checking that your virus definitions are indeed up-to-date, and also perform a scan of your computer before you leave, when you're away and on your return to ensure you haven't picked up any malicious code.

Another mistake that business travellers can also make is to ignore the security on any USB drives that they use. Simply using a USB drive on a public computer that you then use later with your own PC can easily be the way that your computer becomes infected. We recently looked at the top five USB drives that all include industry standard encryption built in.

One simple method of securing your email communications for instance is to encrypt each message. Your IT department may already have this installed as part of the VPN, but if not, you can use third party encryption platforms such as the well-known PGP or by using other systems supplied by companies including Trend Micro and Webroot.

Cleaning your system

If the worst happens and your computer does become infected with a virus or other malicious code, your first thought would usually be to run a complete system scan using the anti-virus application you have installed. In many cases this will locate and either eliminate the malicious code, or at least quarantine it until you get back to your office where your IT department can take care of it.

However, if you find your computer is still not clean of the malicious code, you do have another options. It is always advisable to travel with a rescue CD that will load a limited operating system onto your computer that then allows the security software to search and destroy the infection.

Rescue disks are available from a number of suppliers. You may like to match your rescue disk to whoever also supplies your main security package. Some of the leading suppliers include Kaspersky, F-Secure, AVG, Norton and SystemRescueCD. Many of these systems allow you to create a bootable disk using a USB drive including Bitdefender and Kaspersky.

Mobile attack

Hackers and other creators of malicious code, because of the diverse range of operating systems that have been adopted by the main developers, have so far largely overlooked the cell phone. This has made it difficult to for hackers to develop viruses for instance, as it has been until now uneconomical to code for each cell phone operating system. Today there are around 600 known viruses, but you may not have been aware of a single one of them or had your phone infected.

This scenario looks set to change radically over the next few years. Cell phones have evolved into smart phones and have become mini computers in their own right. And with the rise of mobile commerce (M-commerce) that could dwarf the money spent online, expect the hacking community to start to pay close attention to your handset.

Often overlooked by many business travellers is how secure the data they have on their cell phones is from attack. Earlier in the year Sophos released their own Security Threat Monitor for the iPhone that can be downloaded from iTunes. At the launch Senior Technology Consultant Graham Cluley said: "People are spending less and less time chained to their desks, and an app like this gives users access to the very latest security information, wherever they are. Our analysts based around the world update Sophos Security Threat Monitor hourly. Rather than merely providing text-based statistics, we've made it easy for users to understand the latest malware attacks, with alerts and information delivered straight to their iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad."

The good news is that the smart phone market that is powered by Apps is much more secure than simply downloading applications from the Internet to run on your PC. The vetting process that Apple uses for instance ensures that each App is of a high quality. As the eco system of Apps expands, other platforms such as Windows Mobile and of course Android may become less secure. The advice is always to ensure you only download Apps to your phone after thoroughly vetting them. However, you can also install your own anti-virus Apps as an added precaution. For Android users Droid Security is a good choice. And if you have the iPhone, McAfee Global Threat Intelligence Mobile is comprehensive.

Virus and malicious code attack

• Turkey leads the league table for risky surfing, with AVG's software having to step in to protect on average, one in 10 users of the Internet. Web users in Russia (1 in 15 were hit), Armenia (1 in 24), and Azerbaijan (1 in 39) also suffer high rates of attacks.
• Other areas where web surfers are disproportionately at risk include Bangladesh (1 in 41), Pakistan (1 in 48) and in SE Asia, Vietnam and Laos (where the chances of facing an attack are both 1 in 42).
• What about other major Western countries? The US is at number nine when it comes to the riskiest places to go online (1 in 48), UK is ranked 30th (1 in 63), Australia 36th (attack ratio = 1 in 75) while German web surfers come in at number 41 (1 in 83).
• Sierra Leone had the fewest attacks with on average one in 696 web surfers facing an attack. Niger too fared where just one in 442 surfers on average were attacked, however with low broadband penetration and Internet use in these African countries.
• It is because of its high Internet use and broadband penetration that Japan, where there is an average of just one in 403 facing an attack, is arguably the safest place to surf the net.

	As a free download, Microsoft Security Essentials gives your Windows 7 or Windows XP laptop robust antivirus protection.
	Being aware of the threat levels that you face when travelling from malware, spyware, viruses and hackers is child's play thanks to this smartphone App from Sophos.
	This infographic gives a clear indication of which areas of the world you should take particular care when visiting to protect your sensitive data.