In general if you follow the guides available from people like slicehost/linode etc in how to get your VPS secure it is likely to be more secure than some share

In general if you follow the guides available from people like slicehost/linode etc in how to get your VPS secure it is likely to be more secure than some shared hosts seem to be. You do need to keep on top of keeping the VPS up to date but that isn't much work.