A record number of Americans are traveling this summer, by car or by plane, and travel habits continue to blur the line between business and personal. American Airlines alone expects to welcome 75 million customers across 750,000 flights during its summer travel period, May 21 through September 8, the busiest summer in the airline’s history, and 71% of Americans plan to drive on their next vacation. Boarding pass or full tank, most travelers carry a phone or laptop, and many use it for vacation photos and work email in the same afternoon. That overlap is where cyber risk appears for small businesses, whether your clients realize it or not.
Why Summer Travel Raises the Stakes
Employees rarely think of a hotel room or a rental car as a business risk. But the devices they carry often hold client files, saved passwords, and company email. A lost phone or spoofed hotel Wi-Fi can quickly stop being a personal inconvenience and instead become a business exposure.
Air travel has had a rough stretch of headlines. In April 2026, a cyberattack on shared check-in and boarding software disrupted operations at major European hubs, including Heathrow, Frankfurt, and Copenhagen, pushing staff back to manual processing for days. Closer to home, a ransomware group breached Tulsa International Airport’s systems in February 2026, leaking financial records and employee data.
Road trips carry their own version of the same problem: more than half of renters sync their phones to a rental car’s infotainment system, and fewer than half remember to delete that data, contacts and call logs included, before returning the keys. Neither risk requires a targeted attack. The everyday infrastructure of a trip, airport network or dashboard alike, isn’t automatically safe.
What Threats Should Travelers Watch For?
Most travel-related breaches trace back to a handful of familiar risks:
- Unsecured, public Wi-Fi security risks. Free networks at airports, hotels, and cafes are easy to fake. A network named “Airport_Free_Wi-Fi” may be spoofed and actually not belong to the airport at all.
- Public computers and kiosks. Logging into email or financial accounts on a shared computer leaves credentials behind if the session isn’t closed properly.
- Phishing links. Flight delay notices and hotel booking emails are common phishing bait, especially during high-volume travel weeks.
- Physical device theft or loss. A stolen laptop or phone is a data breach risk the moment it leaves a traveler’s hands, particularly if it isn’t locked or encrypted.
An employee who checks work email over hotel Wi-Fi, or loses a phone with saved company logins, has created a remote work cybersecurity issue. That’s a natural opening for a cyber liability conversation, and it doesn’t require a hypothetical.
Cybersecurity Travel Tips: Before, During, and After
Here’s a short list you can review with clients to help mitigate their cyber liability insurance risk.
Before the trip
- Update operating systems, apps, and antivirus software
- Back up important files to the cloud or an external drive
- Enable device tracking (Find My iPhone, Find My Device)
- Leave unnecessary devices at home
During the trip
- Turn off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth auto-connect
- Avoid logging into financial or business accounts on public Wi-Fi
- Keep devices physically secured (a hotel safe, not a nightstand)
- Hold off on real-time location posts until you’re home
After the trip
- Review bank, email, and business account activity for anything unusual
- Change passwords, especially any reused across accounts
- Delete travel apps no longer needed
FAQ
Q: Is public Wi-Fi ever safe to use while traveling?
A: It depends on what it’s used for. Browsing is generally lower risk. Logging into financial accounts or business systems is where public Wi-Fi security risks grow, particularly on unencrypted networks.
Q: What should a client do if a work device is lost or stolen?
A: Report it immediately, remote-wipe it if possible, and change any passwords stored on that device. Business owners should loop in IT or the carrier so compromised accounts can be locked down fast.
Q: Does cyber liability insurance cover incidents that start while an employee is traveling?
A: Coverage varies by policy, but many cyber liability policies extend to breach response, business interruption, and liability costs regardless of where the compromise originated. It’s worth reviewing the specifics against the client’s actual policy rather than assuming.
Let’s Talk Coverage
Summer travel isn’t going away, and neither is the remote work cybersecurity exposure that comes with it. MiniCo has the program expertise and market access to bring cyber liability into your conversations, whether a client’s team is checking email from a hotel lobby or syncing data to a rental car. Reach out to a MiniCo representative to walk through coverage options designed for today’s hybrid ways of working. We can discuss cyber liability insurance options built for exactly this kind of everyday risk.
