Was looking around the news this morning trying to find something to blog about. At the same time listening to CNN drone on about the economy. Gold hit an all time hight today at $991 an ounce, crude oil at another high of $103.5, while the dollar tumbled and US manufacturing hit a 5 year low. Just not a pretty picture. My thoughts begin to wander to what effect our economy is going to have to have on the IT industry and security in particular. I have seen pundits on both sides of this question. Some say that in tough times business has to be more efficient so IT spending is likely to remain constant and may even increase. Others say that of course as budgets tighten, IT and security are going to take their share of hits. I tend to believe the second camp. Security budgets are always being squeezed even in good times, I can't help but think they will take a bigger hit in bad times. Unless you can really show a real ROI (and lets not get into the "is there an ROI with security" stuff) or there is a compliance gun to their head, I believe that companies will slash and burn their security budgets as things get tighter.

So what is the answer? Not sure, but maybe hedge your bets by devoting more to international sales on the chance that they will not be as effected as US based companies with this economies? What do you think?