That sucks. So basically, don't use it, huh?
i've used it, you may want to decrease -checklevel and -checkblocks. It took a couple days to download and verify the blockchain. I actually boostrapped the blockchain from:
http://eu2.bitcoincharts.com/blockchain/ and it still took a few days.
I just did it to see if it can be done, i don't keep it running. I was running pretty much continuously for a few weeks. I think i tried running p2pool on it at the same time, that was less stable.
edit: regarding security, it's pretty much rebuilt debian wheezy. If your just running bitcoind and ssh, it's going to be pretty secure.