This is probably one of the best written, well laid out articles on this very subject. Whether you are in to computer security or not, this is a guide that should be followed by all.

There are times when you want to connect to the Internet through unknown and/or insecure networks such as the local Panera or other WiFi hotspot. If you aren’t careful, you might make it all too easy for someone to sniff your connection using Ettercap.

This HOWTO is an easy to read, well written reference guide for setting up Firefox and GAIM so that it uses PuTTY as a sort of proxy server. The only piece missing is the SSH server that you are going to need access to in order for this to work properly. Look around the internet and you should be able to find something that suits your needs.

The main purpose for a DMZ is to separate hosts that need to be accessed from an external network from the internal network. This is useful for companies that need to offer information and services to external users like Web, DNS, Mail and FTP access to the outside world. In this case, the hosts on the internal network can initiate communication with the hosts on the DMZ network and hosts from the external network can initiate communication with hosts on the DMZ network. However in most cases hosts from the external network cannot initiate communications with hosts on the internal network and hosts on the DMZ network cannot initiate communications with hosts on the internal network.

If you are interested in information assurance then this article is a good place to start. It is a quality overview of some of the basic scenarios that we run in to when consulting with clients interested in deploying network security measures throughout their enterprise.