When an encrypted VPN is not available, the next best solution is usually port-forwarding one or more port(s) through an SSH tunnel. The down-side of SSH is that by itself it cannot maintain a persistent connection — network issues may force the tunnel to stop responding, or even drop completely. Autossh is a small front-end for SSH that can monitor the connection, and restart the tunnel if it drops or stops responding. I found that the startup scripts available for autossh on the internet were a little too basic for my needs — I wanted autossh to start multiple connections, and to start/stop each one individually if I needed — so I wrote my own.