As the year draws to a close, consumers everywhere are preparing for a fresh start in 2010.  To compliment the spirit of renewal, President Obama announced Monday night that Howard Schmidt, security industry veteran and one-time cybersecurity advisor during the Bush administration, has been selected to fulfill the prestigious and much-needed role. The White House Cybersecurity Coordinator and his designated team will work within the National Security Staff and have regular contact with the President in order to swiftly address issues of national cybersecurity.

As 2009 comes to a close, the industry begins to look back and take inventory of the most prominent breaches, hacks, and security compromises that were endured throughout the past 12 months. With this assessment, experts can attempt to frontload preventative measures for 2010.

This year has been an unfortunately busy one for the fraud prevention and identity security industry, with the rate of corporate data breaches, business fraud and identity thefts continuing to rise. In 2009, phishing attacks alone increased by as much as 600 percent according to Bank Info Security’s Linda McGlasson.

The Adobe PDF file is a standard method of information delivery in the business world. Presentations, white papers, sales literature, promotional materials and everything in between rely on PDFs to ensure clean, professional and universally readable transmissions of information. So, this past Monday’s announcement that Adobe’s Acrobat and PDF reader software are both being exploited by malicious programming came as an important advisory to businesses worldwide.

Keeping personal information safe in our Internet-driven culture is a constant challenge, especially since the safest route is not always the most convenient or the most cost-effective one to take.

With so many businesses operating out of consumer homes or from small businesses without custom software, it’s no surprise that thousands of companies access both corporate and consumer information stored online using Mozilla Firefox. Business owners looking to avoid the threats of browser-borne malicious software (malware) often choose Firefox for corporate use because of its well-known propensity to be more secure. However, according to PCMagazine’sSecurity Watch blog, Firefox’s safe reputation is now as at risk.

Data breaches like the one reported in Wired magazine’s Threat Level blog are the reasons that the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) Red Flags Rule will be a groundbreaking—and necessary—call for standardization and compliance of consumer and business security measures. According to the story, a class action lawsuit is now being brought against the manufacturer of a bank-card-processing system that failed to meet industry security standards for payment systems. The lack of security resulted in consumers having their personal financial data stolen by a hacker operating in Romania.

The news that the number of data breaches in the United States dropped this year is bittersweet. According to Forbes Magazine, while fewer breaches have been reported during 2009, the amount of information exposed has exponentially increased since last year.

November marks the one-year anniversary of one of the largest and most complex cyber crimes in history. A network of international criminals executed an attack on an American credit card processor that, in less than 12 hours, saw more than 2,100 ATM machines vandalized in 280 different cities across the globe. The thieves’ coordinated attack netted more than $9 million in stolen cash.