Question

We can avoid serialising fields by using the transient keyword.
Is there any other way of doing that?

Answer 1

http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/platform/serialization/spec/security.html

SUMMARY:Preventing Serialization of
Sensitive Data Fields containing
sensitive data should not be
serialized; doing so exposes their
values to any party with access to the
serialization stream. There are
several methods for preventing a field
from being serialized:

1. Declare the field as private transient.
2. Define the serialPersistentFields
   field of the class in question, and
   omit the field from the list of
   field descriptors.
3. Write a class-specific serialization
   method (i.e., writeObject or
   writeExternal) which does not write
   the field to the serialization
   stream (i.e., by not calling
   ObjectOutputStream.defaultWriteObject).

Here are some links.

Declaring serialPersistenetFields.

Serialization architecture specification.

Security in Object Serialization.