Är du beredd när det smäller? : Utmaningar inom incidenthantering med fokus på IT-konsultbolag

Sammanfattning: Information security incident management is important for organizations and its importance is increasing. Information security incidents are increasing both in number and in scope and in 2018 GDPR and the NIS-directive require organizations to report incidents to a supervision authority. This study highlights IT-consulting companies and their vulnerable position as subcontractors. The study aims to address the lack of empirical research in incident management and to inform future theory development. The goal of the study is to answer the research questions (1) what challenges do IT-consultancy companies experience with their incident management? (2) What challenges are specifically related to the GDPR and the NIS-directive? And (3) what challenges are specific for consulting companies? Challenges with the incident management are identified and clarified by qualitative interviews with experts and a survey. The analysis of the results shows that some of the challenges are consistent with previous studies, while some are new and that the survey partly support the experts' opinions. The conclusion of the study is that the majority of the companies’ improvement opportunities are linked to internal and external communication, cost focus, absence of a major incident, awareness, GDPR, the role of consulting company and internationally recognized difficult activities. The research contribution of the study consists of identified challenges in the field of incident management derived from IT-consultancy companies. The result of the study are recommended to IT-consultancy companies that would like to improve their incident management process by gaining an understanding of incident management issues.