Secure File Sharing - Windows to Mac on WiFi

Don't use Homegroup sharing.

What I do is turn on sharing for the folder itself. On Windows 7 right-click and select properties, click the sharing tab then advanced sharing and select the box to share that folder. When connecting to the share I need to specify the username and password for an account on the WINDOWS computer that has access to that folder.

Not sure about viewing them with an iPad.

 

You can also just secure the Wifi.
I don't think DLNA media sharing (Mediaplayer) really lets you limit who shares but as mentioned if you right click on folders in explorer (or an entire drive) you can share that yet limit who gets access.

In finder or something you can easily just mount the network drive.
Go -> connect to server (CMD+K)
type smb://192.168.2.1
or whatever the IP of your windows PC is. You need a Windows user name and password. It also doesn't work if you Windows account doesn't have a password. Windows just doesn't let you connect to accounts without passwords over the network as a security measure. You can also just make a secondary account that you never use just for that with a password.
Over wifi this solution is not terribly fast but it works usually well enough for mediastreaming.

For media I prefer DLNA and as far as MP3 and movies go who care who sees it. Mount you porn selection privately
DLNA is read only, so it is not like they can mess with your stuff.
in finder you can mount drives and folders any way you like as readonly or read/write. You have to set those permissions in Windows.

 

Ssh :d

 

Securing the Wifi won't prevent people that you give the password for the Wifi to from connecting to the share. Doing it my way will.

 

Obviously securing wifi only does anything if he only means to keep outside sniffers at bay not if other people have to be on the same network. Like an apartment neighbor.

SSH is a bit overkill for the situation. It is not that straight forward to explain and really not necessary. It is only the tunnel you'd still have to figure out how to get access rights or how to serve up the files.
One could also make a VPN to the Windows PC and DLNA share over that connection. If it sets all other networks to public and only the VPN to privat. But I suppose that would also be overkill in how difficult it is to complain when mounting and external folder does the trick.

 

The intent of my post was that it sounded like the OP wanted to be able to access the files from HIS computer but not allow other computers to access them if he had someone over and they were using his network.

 

I'd say the op's post isn't clear enough to really make out what his worry is but if is the unlined latter part then securing the wifi is all that is needed.