48 percent of respondents felt their companies are focusing on cost savings at the expense of IT security. 27 percent of security experts believe their IT security budget is being spent on compliance issues that do not improve security. 62 percent of survey respondents report the average firewall rule base has 100s of rules. Only ten percent have the capacity to conduct continuous firewall audits, and 40 percent are considering moving in that direction in response to new legislation such as the EU Directive on Privacy. Almost half of respondents report that they plan to deploy next generation firewalls in the coming year.”]