Security software maker Lookout is offering new mobile users information on how they can protect their data and avoid cyber threats through a web service that it launched yesterday.

The Smartphone Security Checker is hosted on the FCC’s website and lists several other cosponsors besides Lookout, including the Department of Homeland Security, The National Cyber Security Alliance and CTIA. Once you select your OS the site loads a list of 10 fundamental mobile securities with links to the appropriate tutorials.

“We’ve unmistakably transitioned into a mobile era where we rely on our phones and tablets for countless aspects of our everyday lives. A secure mobile experience is a critical factor in determining if people will trust their phones and use them to the fullest potential. It’s great that both the government and private sectors are working together to solve mobile security challenges for the benefit of people everywhere,” says John Hering, CEO and co-founder of Lookout.”

Security Checker couldn’t have come sooner. Twenty millions Americans will buy their first smartphone this holiday season, while nearly as many global Android users worldwide expected to encounter malware in the coming year. This is joined by the statistic that four in ten people have already clicked on an unsafe link in 2012.

Lookout is the latest vendor to have jumped on the holiday-season endpoint security bandwagon. McAfee’s identity theft guru blogged his own list of recommendations yesterday, around the same time Dell announced its latest acquisition.

The company picked up Credant Technologies for an undisclosed sum – a maker of data protection software for mobile devices, PCs and public cloud environments. Dell says that its new asset lists over 2 million users across key verticals including IT, healthcare, public sector and the academia.