For people who trade stocks online, how do you protect your assets?I've heard of encryped hard drives and softwares to encrype your existing hard drives, but I think that's more like protecting data being stored into the drives. Since financial transactions involves sending and receiving data online, the encryption hardware and software don't really help, am I right? If yes, what are the right tool that we should use?I heard there are malicious software that record your key strokes, gather similar information and send it back to identity thieves. How can we protect ourselves?

Get good antivirus/antispyware/antiadware.Use a trojan search occasionally as well, there are several free online. Use a firewall on your internet connection, either physically, with a router, or software, via windowsfirewall or other software.If you have a wireless router, make sure you have WEP encryption or stronger turned on.

the smartest thing you could do is NOT use windows for financial transactions. You could use OSX, or Linux, or Solarus even, all are safer than Windows on the net.Windows is the most popular operating system in the world, so most if not all of the malware written is for it.

Use a very secure, cleanly installed operating system. OpenBSD with nothing else installed but a browser would be a good option. Linux is a good choice too.If you "must" run windows try installing it on a machine that is clean - has nothing else installed on it. Do all of your financial transactions on this clean machine. Don't go to any websites, don't check webmail, don't do anything else except your transactions on this clean machine.Use an unpriveleged account, like the guest account, to run your browser in. Use Firefox with No Script and other security "add ons". Internet Explorer has a terrible reputation, but if you must run it, run it with the latest patches.So essentially, run a minimal clean, basic install with no other stuff on your system, update it frequently, use a secure browser with security add ons.

An industrial strength firewall such as ZoneAlarm Pro, ditto for antivirus and also use an encrypted anonymous proxy ( from a reputable commercial operation).