hi grandma,
ssh is really one of the most important connection tools:
just play around to connect to a server, than start to transfer files and later begin to tunnel different ports and services through unscecure environments like the internet... perhaps additionally secured by fail2ban.
it's amazing how endless are the opportunities of ssh and it's tools.
perhaps you give it a try, but there are some further interesting tools that base on or include the ssh framework:
f.e.
rsync to sync files or whole systems on different hosts
unison a gui tool that does the same thing in mixed environments with win, mac and linux
rsnapshot to get snapshots of your data plus something like a history of different versions.
sshfs to avoid poorly secured samba- or nfs-server-configurations
and so on.
give it a try, it' s really worth!