The Heartland Payment Systems data breach may be the fraud story of year, but ATM and debit card thefts are growing. Law enforcement in New York City recently announced that a criminal gang had stolen $500,000 from hundreds of customers' bank accounts via skimming devices at Sovereign Bank branches in Staten Island. And a survey conducted by security vendor Actimize shows that almost 70 percent of financial institutions experienced an increase in ATM/debit card fraud claims from 2007 to 2008.

Twenty-three percent of respondents say those claims jumped between 5 percent and 9 percent, while the rest noted growth of anywhere between 10 and 74 percent. In 2008, the financial institutions surveyed lost an average of $744,321 — with some as high as $12 million — to ATM fraud alone, and an average of $145,560, or as high as $1 million, to data breaches. "Criminals like cards and PINs. It is much easier to cash them out, rather than to hire a mule or repackager with stolen credit cards," says fraud expert Mike Urban of Fair Isaac.