New regulations will soon swell IT workloads

The financial meltdown, fueled by a decade of exotic financing mechanisms that some say were designed to hide risk and pass it on to unwary buyers, will have a major impact on IT budgets, personnel, and reporting responsibilities. New regulations will put IT in the hot seat, much as the post-Enron Sarbanes-Oxley and other such rules did in the early 2000s as governments responded to that period's financial shenanigans. IT acts as the regulators' "beat cop," enforcing the rules through the technology systems they deploy and manage. So, despite being battered by recession-linked cutbacks, IT will have to find a way to take on the heavy burden of new regulations expected to emerge from U.S. and other governments in 2009,