There really is no such thing as 100% secure.  Not for your wallet, a web site or anything else.

Security is an interesting business, currently the attackers have the upper hand, and the defenders are playing catchup.  This has been going on since the first guy picked up a stick to whack his enemy with only to find his enemy came back with a shield and a stick.  Eventually the defenders will catch up since this is really a vital issue, not just for bitcoins but for all aspects of life, including of course our digital lives.

I was reading last night about some alternative hardware to speed up the hash rates adn lower the power consumption.  FPGA boards and chips are being developed apparently.  It did occur to me that this might be an effort to disrupt the current situation or perhaps is not true.  It was also mentioned in other posts that AMD is of course testing their cards extensively.  It would seem that running a miner on the card would be a good stress test.

Like many things, the hardware and software evolve rapidly when lots of people get interested in the problem.

I would suggest that everyone consider the exchange carefully before committing any money and time to it. 

It would seem that any web site handling transactions involving multiple thousands of dollars, or any amounts really would have a comprehensive security plan and audits in place.  this would include a response plan, notifications and procedures for security events.

The way to make this happen is to insist that the business operations are insured.  The exchange owner should have in place sufficient insurance to cover operations and attack liabilities.  Any insurance company that would write the policy presumably would insist on some set of agreed upon processes, audits and security vulnerability assessments.

The bottom line is that any reputable business has insurance.  Insurance costs real money.  The exchanges require some assurance from the owners that the users interests will be protected.

If I understand this correclty the wallet.dat file needs to be kept in an encrypted volume, for example truecrypt.  Can Anyone advise me and others as to how we should setup and operate the bitcoin with a TruCrypt encrypted volume?

ivank2139, new, almost seriously mining, studying, trying to figure this out.....

I think you are right about that..... if anything is increasing in value then it is a good investment assuming it is marketable.  One thing I have not seen people mention is the inflation of USD that is happening, Assume 10% or more.  also I wonder if AMD or someone else is working on new cards that are more efficient.

I will buy a few, and run the mining rigs for a while just to see what happens.  I also invest in Silver not so bad, stocks pretty bad, and by far the biggest investment is real estate not so good either....   but I do get a nice place to live. 

I have been acquiring hardware to build a couple of mining rigs.  Newegg.com and Tigerdirect, where I usually order parts from, are both out of stock in the higher end graphics cards.  I did find a couple for sale on ebay, the bids were already over $900.  Newegg shows 4 cards in the mid $700 to $800 + range.  I asked to be notified when they become available.

I am wondering if AMD is seeing a big increase in demand for their high end cards and if so when the supply might increase.  I also would like to know more about their plans for the next generation of high end cards.  Specifically if they can reduce the power consumption it would dramatically affect the mining profitability.

It is also apparent that the cost of electricity to run the build rigs is quite significant.  Since these cards draw 900 watts at rated output and I pay $0.15 per KwH for power, running one for 24 hours costs about $3.60 a day.  If the machines reside in AC space that will add more load to the AC.  In Florida this is already high.  So running one high end rig for a month is likely to increase my bill by at least $100.  I even looked into adding some Solar PV capability to my home to offset the increase in power costs. 

Building and operating these mining rigs makes economic sense, at least a little bit, and especially if one expects the value of bitcoins to rise dramatically in the future.  However it is fun, at least for some of us.