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More companies are trimming their cybersecurity budgets, The Wall Street Journal (subscription) reports.

What’s going on: “Of 14,865 cyber professionals asked, 47% said there had been some form of cutbacks in cybersecurity—layoffs, budget cuts, hiring or promotion freezes—in the past 12 months, according to a survey by trade group ISC2 in collaboration with Forrester Research.”

• “Of that group, 22% said there had been layoffs on their teams, while 53% saw delays in buying or implementing technology, according to the study published Tuesday.”
• The majority of those polled—71%—said their workloads had increased due to the reduced budgets.

Why it’s problematic: The belt tightening could mean increased security risks, a source told the Journal.

• “We should be concerned about cutbacks,” said Clar Rosso, chief executive officer of ISC2, the company that conducted the survey. “We have a ton of work to do on the C-suite to get them to actually understand the risks they’re putting their organizations in.”

Adopting workarounds: One company is expanding its use of artificial intelligence to automate some cybersecurity tasks previously done by human employees, while other firms are simply asking their security chiefs to make do with less.

The impact: While cybersecurity is often seen as resistant to downturns in the market, some cybersecurity organizations have announced layoffs this year.

• “Vendors that supply them have struggled recently in part because of budget pressure on many of the companies they serve.”

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