[Sgt_Strider]

I'm thinking this may be too tough for some people to answer, but I thought I'll give it a try. I'm going to be overseas for most of the summer and my laptop is most likely going to be connected to unsecure networks. Security is going to be very important as I'll be logging on to my bank accounts and transferring funds and it would be tragic if somehow someone manage to access my usernames and passwords.

I think the most obvious things to do would be to make sure that a good AV and firewall is installed. However, I don't think that is enough. Would connecting to a VPN server help? I'm not sure how this would work, but people told me that through a VPN connection, all traffic is encrypted. I was thinking of just logging on to my university's VPN connection and pray that all the information that I'm sending would be encrypted. Would this help?

[Woomera]

VPN wont be the answer to your problem as you need to trust the network you are connecting to 100%.
as for your normal security such as staying clean from viruses and kiddy attacks a firewall and av combination will do the job.
As for your logins like bank loginf you have to make sure youre connectin to HTTPS before you enter your username and password and pay attention carefully to any alert's you get when you are connecting to HTTPS to make sure the certification of the target website is GENUINE and up-to-date.Also i recommend you install an anti-malware like Spybot to search for keyloggers and monitor your firewall for applications suspesious connections.

Have a nice trip as im staying home or worse this summer

[nitroshift]

Actually VPN`ing to your University network is your safest bet, providing that you trust the University security settings.

@Woomera
Have you ever tried a VPN connection?

[Woomera]

Few times during my MCSE classes in the lab but the speed in vpn is not very nice and its an End-to-End connection and the encryption only applies to the connection between two points but after passing the vpn server the packet still wanna reach to the bank's website hosting server and no one can garuntee the safty of the packet between the vpn server and the hosting server.or can they?