How should proactive and reactive maintenance be distinguished?

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Prevention vs response is what this distinction is about. Proactive maintenance aims to prevent issues before they disrupt operations, using activities like patching, tuning, monitoring, and regular preventive tasks. Reactive maintenance, on the other hand, comes into play after a fault or incident has occurred, with fixes implemented to restore service. The best description is the one that says proactive maintenance prevents issues by patching and tuning, while reactive fixes occur after issues arise.

The other ideas don’t fit this distinction well. Automating tasks versus manual work isn’t the same as proactive versus reactive—both approaches can involve automation or manual steps, and the distinction is about preventing problems versus repairing them after they happen. Framing proactive as security-only and reactive as performance misses the broader purpose of maintenance, which is about preventing failures and restoring functionality, not just focusing on one domain. Saying proactive ignores incidents is incorrect because proactive work reduces the likelihood of incidents and prepares for them, rather than skipping them.