Remote Database Access

Situation

  See the situation for proxy backups, this is really an alternate
  solution to the same problem.  Rather than run the backup remotely, 
  set things up so that we can do the necessary database things
  remotely. 

  This opens a bunch of cans of worms - how do we secure remote
  access, can we localize all of the relevent database access routines
  into a module that could be replaced with a remote access module...

  Is there really a need for this if we have proxy backups?