If a ransomware note flashed on your screen tomorrow, would you — and could you — react in minutes? A balanced approach to cyber incidents blends proactive prevention with drilled reactive response. Without both, even a small phishing email can snowball into days of downtime, GDPR fines and reputational damage. Use the framework below to tighten defences before an attack and to recover quickly when one slips through.

Building a Proactive Approach to Cyber Incidents for Irish SMEs in 2025

1. Proactive pillars that harden your approach to cyber incidents

– Rotate and strengthen passwords quarterly

• Enforce 12-character, unique passwords.

• Store them in Bitwarden or 1Password behind MFA. Read: Our full Password Security Guide.

– Secure remote access with VPN + MFA

A business-grade VPN encrypts traffic and limits access by device certificate. Pair it with Microsoft Entra Passkeys for phishing-resistant MFA.

– Run monthly security-awareness training & phishing drills

Staff remain your first firewall. The SBA’s Cybersecurity Training outlines core topics for SMEs.

– Review access controls every 90 days

Disable dormant accounts, apply least-privilege roles and log all administrative actions.

– Patch and monitor continuously

Automate OS and third-party patches; feed logs to a 24 × 7 SIEM so anomalies trigger instant alerts.

2. Reactive framework — a five-step approach to cyber incidents from NIST

The NIST Cybersecurity Framework defines five reactive functions (Identify, Protect, Detect, Respond, Recover) that guide post-breach actions.

Phase – Identify

• Key Actions – Classify critical assets; map data flows
• Tools – Asset inventory; data-flow diagrams

Phase – Protect

• Key Actions – Isolate network segments; enable EDR containment
• Tools – SentinelOne rollback; Azure Firewall

Phase – Detect

• Key Actions – Correlate SIEM alerts with threat intel
• Tools – Microsoft Sentinel; AlienVault OTX

Phase – Respond

• Key Actions – Activate IR playbook; notify DPC within 72 h (GDPR)
• Tools – PagerDuty war-room; templated disclosure emails

Phase – Recover

• Key Actions – Restore from immutable backup; conduct lessons-learned
• Tools – Datto SaaS Protection; post-incident RCA

3. Blending proactive and reactive layers into one coherent approach to cyber incidents

Use tabletop exercises to stress-test both layers

Quarterly drills reveal gaps between theory and practice; record RTO (time to restore) and MTTR (time to remediate).

Map controls to risk register

Link every preventive or reactive control to a specific risk (e.g., “Loss of Sage Accounts server ➜ daily CDP snapshots + tested bare-metal restore”).

Track KPIs publicly

Dashboards showing patch compliance, failed logins and mean detection time keep cyber hygiene in everyone’s line of sight.

4. Common pitfalls that weaken an otherwise solid approach to cyber incidents

• Only backing up VMs, not Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace – Add SaaS backups with separate credentials.
• Relying on SMS-based MFA – Switch to hardware keys or authenticator apps.
• One-off risk assessment -Re-run whenever you add a new SaaS app or branch office.

5. What’s new in 2025 — trends shaping your approach to cyber incidents

• AI-assisted SOC tools – triage alerts 50 % faster.

• EU NIS2 Directive – demands breach reporting within 24 hours for critical-sector SMEs.

• Immutable cloud snapshots – (Azure Blob immutability) render ransomware encryption useless.

 

Strengthen your organisation’s approach to cyber incidents today

Spector IT delivers end-to-end cyber resilience: zero-trust architecture, 24 × 7 monitoring and drilled incident-response. Book a free 30-minute discovery call and receive a gap analysis aligned to the NIST framework.