We've also had to cancel all open positions, and it looks as if we won't be hiring any new staff for the rest of this year. And we let all our contractors go. Meanwhile, we're experiencing above-normal staff attrition due to increasingly demanding work requirements. That's a vicious circle -- as more people leave due to being overworked, the remaining people end up with more work to do. So we are now running IT with a skeleton crew.

Nobody has said the word "" yet. But that does seem like the next logical step, right? We saved as much money as we could by freezing our current and future spending. If we need to save more, where else would it come from, besides staff?

This has been a long recession, and during it, I've lost my job as security manager twice. Maybe I'm just pessimistic, but it sure feels like history is about to repeat itself -- again.

This week's journal is written by a real security manager, "J.F. Rice," whose name and employer have been disguised for obvious reasons. Contact him at jf.rice@engineer.com.