Accessing you own data is getting more and more important.
Part of it is already accessible from "everywhere", when stored with your emails. But "the cloud" is not that advanced yet and so there are documents you only have on your computer.
Imagine you switch place for a couple of days, and still want to be able to look something up.
One possibility was to create a backup and store all documents you might need on an external drive - a tedious process, and will forget the <em>one important</em> document.
You could also open a port for Windows' Remote Desktop connection, but for security reasons this is not a choice.
There should be a secure way to access the data.