2022/08/27 by Sean B. Maynard, Maynard, Sean, Atif Ahmad +1
Computer Science · #Cryptography and Security (cs.CR) #Cybercrime and Law Enforcement Studies #Digital and Cyber Forensics #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Information and Cyber Security
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2208.13087
openalex publication_date 2022/08/27 · openalex created_date 2022/08/31 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
In the digital age, the protection of information resources is critical to the viability of organizations. Information Security Management (ISM) is a protective function that preserves the confidentiality, integrity and availability of information resources in organizations operating in a complex and evolving security threat landscape. This paper analyses ISM research themes, methods, and theories in high quality IS journals over a period of 30 years (up to the end of 2017). Although our review found that less than 1 percent of papers to be in the area of ISM, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of ISM publications as well as new emerging themes in the past decade. Further, past trends towards subjective-argumentative papers have reversed in favour of empirically validated research. Our analysis of research methods and approaches found ISM studies to be dominated by one-time surveys rather than case studies and action research. The findings suggest that although ISM research has improved its empirical backing over the years, it remains relatively disengaged from organisational practice.