How easy is it for you to manage keeping your server and data secure? I would really like to do this, but my fears of getting hacked have kept me from doing it.
sshd is hidden behind port knocking, for what that's worth. (No, I do not want to have a religious argument about port knocking this morning)
The real key to the simplicity and security of my setup is email over SSH with a console client. Not only does that remove oceans of attack surface, but it also means you can read email without the emails themselves traversing the network. I guess the characters go over SSH, but that's not quite the same thing...
Not trying to lure into an argument you're trying to avoid but I'm just curious; what is the religious argument about regarding port knocking? I know about both sides to tabs/spaces and vim/emacs but am curious what people have against port knocking.
In short, port knocking is a very, very short/weak password. And is a very weak authentication measure.
This is absolutely true and nobody could argue that.
So if you only did port knocking, or if you depended on port knocking, you're making a bad decision.
I believe in defense in depth, and therefore I think that port knocking on top of everything else you already do has good value - especially considering how simple and lightweight knockd is and my experience of it running stably for years at a time.