Ok. Yes, my use case is a private document and media store. I’m ungoogling.
VPN seems like a good place to start. But I’d like a simple answer, and I expect there are none to be had. As you’ve illustrated here, I’ll find a reason to punch holes in the firewall. And then I’m going to need to secure a web server. Life happens. I’ll keep it simple for now while I sort things. Thanks for your perspective.

Ya. I understand VPN. I do enterprise IT stuff. The things I build assume a secure environment. VPN is step one.
Nailing down a web server on the internet tho … there’s so many ways to attack. There’s so many things to secure. And its a bit complex to manage all that.
The nextcloud site covers hardening the server, but doesn’t even mention vpn.
I’ve been watching threads like this. I’m pretty convinced vpn is the answer.

Well, I might as well put a dog in the fight. I’m considering my final, actually secure deployment of nextcloud.

This discussion has convinced me that a vpn is the only answer.
And almost everyone says wireguard.

K. Thats what I will build.

And this is the start of the longest crypto nerd fight I’ve seen on Lemmy. Well done, people!