When times are tough, companies spend less. That's reflected in both a recent IT salary survey detailed here by James Maguire of Datamation and recent IT budget surveys by research firm Forrester and security vendor Finjan.

But the bad guys don't let up when the economy hits the skids -- often it's just the opposite and, indeed, Finjan has documented an increase in cybercrime.

Fortunately, enterprises seem to be aware of this and responding appropriately. According to results released today of an online survey by Finjan, IT departments overall will allocate a larger portion -- 12.6%, to be exact -- of their budgets to security in 2009.

Here are some highlights of the Finjan survey, which included 200 respondents:

• 38% expect no change in 2009 IT budgets from last year 
  
• 34% anticipate a slight decline in overall IT budgets
• 34% expect IT security spending to increase
• 43% say their IT security budget should remain the same

The survey also found that the upward trend in IT security budget allocation was more pronounced in the financial and governmental sectors than in other sectors.