I've never known an organization's CSO or CIO to admit they managed a larger budget than they needed, and the prospects don't look much more promising moving forward. Gartner predicts small and mid-size industries will see a slight increase of five percent to their IT expenses, but most certainly won't cover all the deferred capital expenditures on the list.So that begs the question – what to do first. For my money, I'd start by refreshing the firewalls. Here is why: Such equipment is typically the first line of defense, with individual hackers, organized crime gangs and terrorist groups of all size and sophistication continually developing new ways to infiltrate and control a company's network for a host of reasons, be it to gather competitive intelligence or leverage the systems to perform additional cyberattacks on other entities. This trend is compounded by the increased use of cloud computing and other applications that reside outside the direct controls of an organization. Read the rest of the article here.