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In Beijing, Internet access will soon be in high demand: Half a million people are expected to visit the city of 17 million for the Olympics, and most of them will want web-based access to personal and corporate sites. This may well be the largest international remote access event ever. Much of the attention has been around whether visitors can surf the Internet. But some people are wondering whether they should. Is it safe to surf from China?

“With Software-as-a-Service applications, more users will access their applications across the Internet, so companies can’t rely on physical or firewall access,” said Marc Gaffan, director of product marketing for RSA’s Identity and Access Assurance Group. “The risks are significantly increased.” The U.S. government’s head of counter-espionage, Joel Brenner, is also cautioning travelers to Beijing about identity theft and other threats.

Most users assume that a secure web connection makes them safe. After all, that little yellow SSL padlock doesn’t just mean your traffic is encrypted, it also tells you the URL you’re visiting is the one you wanted — right? Not always, said Jayson Agagnier, a security consultant who specializes in corporate counter-espionage. “On older browsers, the padlock will still be there even if the user accepts a certificate that is not publicly signed.”

To collect passwords, hackers only need to trick surfers into logging in. Many casual users won’t think twice about typing in www.mybank.com and being redirected to mybank.login.com, provided that the new site looks the same. “Obtaining a certificate is fairly easy,” said Gaffan, “and no one really checks the certificate in the lock.”

Phishing for usernames can happen anywhere, but when half a million people descend upon a country that heavily regulates its Internet, it’s an excellent opportunity for mischief. So how can organizations protect themselves? Here are some suggestions:

• Have vacationing workers check URLs closely to be sure the site they’re on matches what they entered, even if it looks the same.
• Get a more trusted — and more costly — Extended Validation certificate. These are harder for a fly-by-night operation to get because they require more thorough background checks.
• Use dynamic passwords that change every minute, so even if someone intercepts a password it quickly expires.
• Use “fat client” VPNs based on IPSEC or SSL instead of relying on a secure web login. VPN clients can’t be tricked into thinking they’re at the right site.

Capturing logins isn’t the only risk, however. It would take a real conspiracy to present a completely faked site, complete with the right URL and a valid SSL certificate. But if a government owns the network, it’s the lawful man in the middle, and it has the resources for such schemes. “You can control the DNS, display any page you like, entice people to log in,” said Gaffan. As IOC president Jacques Rogge said on July 31, “We are not running the Internet in China. The Chinese authorities are running the Internet.”

Agagnier says Olympics-related travel presents a huge industrial and economic espionage opportunity, but Gaffan says he thinks an elaborate network attack may be more work than it’s worth. “If I were a fraudster, I would just spend two hours in Beijing hotels and Internet cafes installing key loggers. You could collect names and passwords, even things like frequent flier numbers that could be used for corporate espionage to track the travel patterns of a competitor’s employees.

Syntenic CTO Daniel Koffler agrees: “I would be concerned about malicious WiFi access points … You don’t really need to own the back-end pipe; a cheap access point and an SSL proxy is all anyone on the street would need to collect some serious information. While you’re in Beijing, if the state wants your data, they’re going to get it. It’s the billion or so citizens you have to watch out for.”

Perhaps the best defense is to take the week off. Several enterprise IT professionals I interviewed for this story said they’re simply telling their users not to log in from China.

There’s more than one way to find a good airfare online, as the Kayak-SideStep merger shows. But what’s the best way? Is there one site that you can rely on to find the best fare for all your travel needs? Or do you need to visit them all to ensure you don’t miss anything?

I set out to compare fare-finding services and booking engines, including Kayak, SideStep, Mobissimo, Farecast, Priceline, Expedia and Hotwire. To do so, I chose three itineraries: a business trip to San Francisco, a trip from the U.S. to South America, and a one-way trip from India to the UK.

The winner? Mobissimo.

Itinerary 1: Business Trip from Denver to San Francisco

When I travel on business, the dates are usually inflexible, because I’m likely attending a conference or other scheduled meeting. I choose nonstop because business travel is hassle enough without lengthening the amount of time it takes to get there and back. But even though my primary concern is convenience, I’ll still have to justify my choice to whomever is footing my business bill. So cost matters.

I started with Kayak, which offered me a fare of $231 with one stop. But I wanted to go nonstop, and for that, it provided a fare of $333. I then used its “compare fares” feature to check on Expedia, Priceline and Hotwire. Nonstop fares on those sites were about the same as Kayak: right around $330.

Hotwire offered a “limited rate” fare of $219, but I wasn’t able to find out the carrier, the times, or whether or not I’d have to make stops — hardly ideal for the business traveler.

SideStep looked like it might have a winner for me, telling me that United had a nonstop flight available for $242. Clicking through, however, revealed that United’s nonstop fare was actually $333.

But then I checked with Mobissimo and Farecast, both of which found a nonstop flight with Frontier for $210! Wow! About a third less — Om would be pleased with my frugality.

The next time I make business travel plans, I’ll be sure to check those sites first — and maybe even go directly to the Frontier site myself. As useful as fare finders are, they’re even more useful if you combine them with some personal knowledge of which airlines most economically serve your favorite routes.

Winners: Mobissimo and Farecast.

Itinerary 2: Trip Home to Paraguay

My Paraguayan au pair is traveling home in February to visit her family before staying in the U.S. for an additional year. As a bonus for her hard work, we’ve offered to pay for her ticket, but obviously we’d like to keep the price low.

The dates for this trip are flexible, but the departure and arrival airports are not. I chose Feb. 15th-29th as the travel days, but with the hope that I could specify “flexible dates” and be offered cheaper days to travel.

Since Mobissimo and Farecast were so helpful with my business trip, I started with them. Mobissimo turned in a pretty good choice, of $1,155.69, and Farecast offered a fare of $1,303. Neither, however, gave me the option of classifying my dates as “flexible.”

Kayak and Priceline each found a fare of $1,140 with Brazil’s largest airline, TAM, while Expedia offered a TAM fare of $1,334. Hotwire doesn’t cover that itinerary.

I wanted to use flexible dates to see if I could find an even cheaper flight, but Expedia’s flexible dates checkbox only works with popular U.S. routes and anyway, it didn’t find the best fare for me in the first place. Kayak doesn’t offer a flexible dates capability. Kayak offers a flexible dates feature, but you need to sign up for a free account to access it.

Priceline made it easy to select alternate departure and return dates, though, so I ran the itinerary through again, shifting up by one day then shifting back by one day. I got the same result: $1,140 flying either United or US Air along with TAM to South America.

Winners: Priceline and Kayak. Close runner-up: Mobissimo.

Itinerary 3: One way from Bangalore to London.

For my third itinerary, I had to use my imagination. So I imagined someone beginning a new life in a different country, moving from India to the UK. Since Mobissimo did well for me with both my first two itineraries, I started with them, using a travel date of March 1st, 2008. It gave me a price of $457 through ebookers.com.

Priceline requires U.S. departure airports, so that was out. Hotwire doesn’t handle one-way tickets and only covers travel in the U.S. and Canada.

Kayak, SideStep, Farecast and Expedia all turned up fares around $460, with Farecast offering up the lowest option, at $455. But then I noticed that I could easily compare fares on Orbitz, Travelation and Cheap Tickets from the SideStep window.

It looked like I’d made a smart move. Using it, I discovered that Orbitz and Cheap Tickets each had available fares of $392, and Travelation had a $385 ticket for a flight on Gulf Air with just one stop! But when I looked closer I noticed that once you added on taxes, the price came up to $462 — almost exactly what I’d found before. It was a good reminder to always compare fares with taxes and additional charges added on.

Winners: Everyone except Priceline and Hotwire.

Overall winner: Mobissimo. It came within a few dollars of the low fare on every itinerary. If I were actually shopping for trips, though, I’d probably run the itinerary through all the sites, to make sure I didn’t miss any great fares.