Information security incident management: Current practice as reported in the literature

• Current practice strives to be compliant with standards such as ISO/IEC 27035.
• Some recommended practices from standards are difficult for organisations to follow.
• More empirical research is needed to answer why incident response challenges remain.

This paper reports results of a systematic literature review on current practice and experiences with incident management, covering a wide variety of organisations. Identified practices are summarised according to the incident management phases of ISO/IEC 27035. The study shows that current practice and experience seem to be in line with the standard. We identify some inspirational examples that will be useful for organisations looking to improve their practices, and highlight which recommended practices generally are challenging to follow. We provide suggestions for addressing the challenges, and present identified research needs within information security incident management.