Yeah having the background definitely helped with the jump in to the crypto sector. As far as stocks though I am all index funds for the long term, and I do some trading in the trips to build up capital quick and for fun lol ;)
For preventing ransomware (or spyware, viruses, anything really), the #1 piece of advice is to be careful of what you click on!!! Seriously, that's 99% of it. Antivirus software, etc., will really only detect and remove malicious things fater you've already been infected. It does very little to actually prevent infection. Some will manage your firewall for you and scan for vulnerabilities, and maybe some other things, but its mostly just detection and cleanup.
If there's an attachment or even a link in an email (even from someone you know!), or on the internet, that you're suspivious of: don't click it! If it is a hyperlink, you can hover over it to expose the real URL, too.
If you download something thay asks you to enable macros or anything, don't do it.
Now, for recovering from an incident, the best thing is to have backups on an external disk. Do a weekly full backup of your computer on to a disk just for backups. Plug it in, back it up, unplug it when the backup is finished. If it's plugged in when you get hit with ransomware then your backups will get hit too, and then they're no good!
I personally run bitdefender, but I have no attachment to it. I ran without AV for years and was just super careful
