My mother will be traveling for a while and I need to provide her with a secure laptop so she can work. A windows laptop is out of the question because:

• she'll be logging into dodgy hotel wireless networks and conference networks

• price of the windows license to install on a netbook

I've installed libreoffice, media players and skype on it. Also enabled SSH so I can intervene but I am worried that I might not be in a position to do so.

Possible threats:

• web browsing

• USB sticks

• insecure networks prone to intrusions

• malware

• SSH/VNC vulnerabilites

• Skype vulnerabilities

All the "securing Ubuntu" guides out there assume the user has a certain level of technical knowledge but this is not the case with moms in general. If a malware can gain even user level access it might compromise her files.