You shouldn't even THINK about having FTP or file sharing type of connections into your
PC without them going through a VPN in front of the PC.
You could use an external "vpn appliance" hardware device, there are a few cheap / basic ones for under $200, or if you're competent at sysadmin you can judiciously use the PC's built in VPN protocols, though those really do tend to be both complex and limited (in Windows) compared to good 3rd party hardware/software solutions.
You'd need to keep that PC scrupulously updated for the latest security patches as well.
It might not be a BAD idea to keep that PC somewhat disconnected (at least in terms of authorizations / passwords / logins) from the LAN and ONLY accessed by connecting through the internet. That way there's more limited damage / compromise potential to the LAN if someone from the internet does break into that PC. They wouldn't gain any access to the campus LAN if it was disconnected totally, or wouldn't gain any "useful" access to the campus net if that machine simply wasn't "authorized" (via stored passwords / domain membership / MAC address etc.) to connect to LAN resources.
You may well have free or cheap access to departmental file hosting options on your campus LAN either web servers, FTP servers, or other such options. I'd look into the possibilities for that before you try to set up your own internet reachable server.
As for protecting your content, if it is worth protecting, it should be irrelevant whether you store it on a publically accessable bit torrent, iDisk, gmail, yousendit, WWW host, whatever. Use basic file encryption and give the password to only the authorized recipients. It doesn't have to be hard, just use something like 7-zip to zip up the file(s) in a given set and set a password for the zipfile. It'll be pretty secure. If you want something a little more security oriented, look at PGP or TrueCrypt to encrypt the files / file sets you distribute.
Just about everyone can run something like 7-zip though without any training, so it is really a pretty good basic way to secure the content. If that option makes 3rd party hosting options more attractive too, great, multiple benefits are yours.
There are also somewhat ...older... types of solutions to this like programs that work through *EMAIL*. They have automated programs read incoming email to a certain address so that you send an email to that address and say something like:
SHOW FILES
and it'll respond with a list of files available for download.
Then you respond with something like:
SEND DATASET1.ZIP
and it'll email back a reply to that address with the file attachment that has been requested.
Uploads can work similarly.
This wouldn't rely on anything other than having the right software installed to manage the incoming mail and the access to an email address that people on the internet can use.
It is "secure" in the sense that you'd be potentially going through your existing campus / department mail servers, so any prudent filtering of anti-virus services, user authentication, auditing, etc. would be done for you, and it would not be a significant vulnerability that you'd have to worry as much about whether you'd have to have IT set it up for you.
And of course it is easily accessed from anywhere with email. The downside is that
it'll take a few minutes or so to access the email and get the response.
Also depending on your users email configurations you may need to limit the file attachment sizes to something like 5-10 megabytes or whatever so that they're not too big for various people's email quotas etc. It is a fine way to pass around small data sets, but not so much for sets that are often composed of many files or many megabytes.
I believe Google is also going to be hosting some research oriented data sets, that may be
appropriate for your use:
http://blog.wired.com/wiredsci...1/google-to-provi.html
http://research.google.com
Amazon has a scalable storage / web service solution they sell too:
http://www.web-strategist.com/...s-ec3-cloud-computing/
http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html?node=201590011
I'm sure there are other organizations that offer connectivity and storage solutions
for research group type uses.
Oh and there are also somewhat specialized distributed filesystems like
ANDREW FILE SYSTEM, OpenAFS, etc. that are used in many large scale / multi-facility / multi-campus type settings to securely share files among different facilities. It isn't something I'd suggest that you set up yourself, but if your institution ALREADY uses/supports it among collaborating teams / institutions, it may be easy to get yourself abnand your peers access to.
