As 2026 approaches, cyber threats are accelerating in scale and sophistication. Small and medium-sized enterprises must prepare with structured planning, practical controls, and focused team goals. Using AI Prompts for cyber security helps SMEs convert uncertainty into clear actions, enabling faster risk assessment and more targeted defensive measures. This guide provides ten ready-to-use prompts, example outputs, and explanations that your team can apply immediately to improve resilience.
Why AI Prompts Help SMEs with Cyber Security Goal Setting
SMEs rarely have large security teams or endless budgets, so planning must be efficient and outcome-driven. By framing strategic questions for AI, teams can generate prioritised risk lists, incident response steps, training outlines and improvement roadmaps, all in plain language that non-experts can use. The prompts below are designed to help teams set measurable goals and ensure responsibilities are clear across the organisation while using AI Prompts for Cyber security as a planning aid.
1. Risk Assessment Prompt
Prompt Template: “Evaluate these assets and systems: [list assets]. Provide a prioritised assessment of likely cyber threats for 2026 with brief reasoning.”
Example Output: The top risks are phishing targeting finance, ransomware through outdated endpoints, misconfigured cloud storage, and credential stuffing on remote access portals.
Why This Is Useful: This prompt provides leaders with a concise, action-oriented risk ranking, allowing limited resources to be targeted where they matter most.
2. Threat Trend Forecasting Prompt
Prompt Template: “Based on recent global threat intelligence, identify the top five threats SMEs should monitor in 2026 and explain why each is rising.”
Example Output: AI-enhanced phishing is on the rise due to improvements in synthetic messaging; the risk of supply-chain compromise increases with vendor ecosystem complexity; credential stuffing grows with the reuse of passwords; and IoT exploitation is notable where devices are unmanaged.
Why This Is Useful: Forecasting supports proactive measures rather than purely reactive responses, helping teams plan mitigation goals tied to likely events.
3. Incident Response Plan Prompt
Prompt Template: “Draft a step-by-step incident response plan for ransomware affecting our file servers, including immediate, short-term and reporting actions.”
Example Output: Immediate: Isolate affected hosts, revoke compromised credentials. Short-term: restore from encrypted backups offline. Reporting: notify relevant authorities and affected customers under legal requirements.
Why This Is Useful: Clear, pre-defined steps reduce confusion and speed recovery, which is essential for SMEs with limited incident experience.
4. Employee Training Outline Prompt
Prompt Template: “Create a modular cyber awareness training syllabus for all staff covering phishing, secure passwords, and remote working best practices.”
Example Output: Module 1: Recognising phishing; Module 2: Password and MFA practices; Module 3: Secure remote access; Module 4: Reporting suspected incidents; short quizzes and a certificate on completion.
Why This Is Useful: Well-structured training reduces human risk, a major factor in many breaches, and sets measurable learning objectives for the team.
5. Cloud Security Review Prompt
Prompt Template: “Review our cloud configuration for AWS and GCP. Identify misconfigurations, weak permissions and immediate hardening steps.”
Example Output: Findings: public S3/GCS buckets with sensitive files, overly permissive IAM roles, and no automated anomaly alerts. Remediation: apply least privilege, enable encryption and set up alerting.
Why This Is Useful: Cloud misconfiguration is a common cause of data exposure; this prompt helps prioritise clear, short-term cloud goals.
6. Access Control & Privilege Review Prompt
Prompt Template: “Analyse user roles and recommend least-privilege policies for these roles: finance, operations, marketing, IT.”
Example Output: Finance: access to billing and reporting only; Operations: access to logistics apps; Marketing: access to CRM non-financial fields; IT admins: limited to admin tasks with logged justification for elevated access.
Why This Is Useful: Implementing least-privilege reduces lateral movement after compromising and clarifies responsibility for each team’s role.
7. Backup & Recovery Strategy Prompt
Prompt Template: “Propose a resilient backup and recovery strategy for customer data, including frequency, storage approach and restore testing schedule.”
Example Output: Daily incremental backups, weekly full backups, encrypted offsite storage, and quarterly restore tests documented with SLA targets.
Why This Is Useful: A testable backup plan ensures business continuity and provides measurable objectives for recovery time and recovery point targets.
8. Third-Party Risk Assessment Prompt
Prompt Template: “Evaluate the cyber risk exposure from our top five suppliers and suggest contractual or operational controls to reduce supplier risk.”
Example Output: Supplier A: high risk due to lack of MFA, requires MFA and SOC 2 report. Supplier B: moderate risk, annual penetration test, and shared incident notification clause.
Why This Is Useful: Third-party risk is often overlooked. This prompt helps set supplier remediation goals and contractual safeguards.
9. Compliance & Documentation Prompt
Prompt Template: “Generate a compliance checklist aligned to UK data protection requirements, including documentation and reporting steps for breaches.”
Example Output: Checklist: data inventory, lawful bases, data processing agreements, breach reporting timeline under UK GDPR, retention schedules and audit logs.
Why This Is Useful: A clear checklist supports legal compliance and helps SMEs plan documentation tasks and audit readiness.
10. Six-Month Security Roadmap Prompt
Prompt Template: “Create a six-month cybersecurity roadmap prioritising quick wins and medium-term improvements for an SME with constrained resources.”
Example Output: Months 1–2: MFA rollout, staff training. Months 3–4: patching and cloud hardening. Months 5–6: penetration testing and policy update.
Why This Is Useful: A staged roadmap helps teams set realistic milestones and measure progress against defined goals.
How Stratpilot Can Help Build and Align Cyber Security Goals
Stratpilot supports SME teams by providing a structured workspace where strategy, prompts and planning come together. Its features include prompt templates, collaborative planning boards and an AI companion that helps teams iterate on plans and produce clear, actionable objectives. Stratpilot does not perform security operations; rather, it helps teams create consistent plans, assign ownership and capture decisions so that cybersecurity goals are easier to execute and review.
Improving cyber resilience does not require unlimited resources, just focused goals and clear plans. Use the prompts above to prioritise work and create measurable objectives your team can achieve through 2026. Request a demo for Stratpilot and use guided prompts and planning features to turn strategy into action.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Q1: What are AI prompts for cyber security?
AI prompts are structured inputs that help AI generate risk analyses, plans and strategic recommendations to support cybersecurity goal settings.
Q2: Can non-technical teams use these prompts?
Yes. Prompts are written to be accessible; technical teams can refine outputs, while non-technical managers can use them for planning and oversight.
Q3: Will these prompts replace specialist security staff?
No. They are planning and clarity aid. Specialist technical work and incident handling require qualified practitioners.
Q4: How often should SMEs run these prompts?
Quarterly is sensible for risk assessment and roadmaps, while training and backup tests should be scheduled more frequently.
