Vetting vendor security is an important step during SaaS, IaaS, and PaaS procurement, and security questionnaires are a non-negotiable component of the process. They demonstrate your organization’s ability to protect its users in a diverse threat environment, which builds customer trust.
While security questionnaires can help you scale your business, they can also slow your team down due to the numerous inefficient manual and repetitive processes involved. You need a streamlined workflow to reap the benefits of security questionnaires fully without letting them hinder efficiency in deal cycles.
In this guide, we’ll learn about different workflow aspects of completing security questionnaires and explore how automation can support the process. We’ll go over the following:
- The relationship between questionnaires and deal cycles
- Different ways questionnaire automation expedites deals
- Key benefits of questionnaire automation
- Tips for streamlining your questionnaire workflows
Security questionnaires: The basics
Security questionnaires are sent and received during vendor due diligence processes to assess the security standing of your organization (which is a third party from your prospect's point of view). It aims to inform your prospects that your organization follows the necessary protocols to minimize risks, such as:
- Risks of operational disruptions (particularly those caused by security incidents)
- Compliance risks and related reputational challenges
- Financial risks tied to an organization’s security posture
In most cases, you’ll receive a questionnaire in the form of yes/no questions. You may either get a custom questionnaire developed by an organization or an industry-standard one like CAIQ or SIG. In many cases, the questionnaire might look like an extensive spreadsheet that requires a lot of evidence collection and manual effort to complete.
The questionnaire will enable your prospects to scrutinize numerous aspects of your organization’s security posture, including:
- Data storing, processing, and sharing protocols
- Technical security controls (firewalls, encryption, etc.)
- Access management
- Security policies and scalability
Due to the comprehensive nature of security questionnaires—and the fact that they are a requirement in almost every vendor or prospect deal—they might take quite some time to complete, regardless of the simple yes/no structure. You need a thorough understanding of your security posture to answer all questions confidently and show prospects that your organization has the necessary controls in place.
{{cta_withimage10="/cta-modules"}} | How to Turn Security into Revenue ebook
The complex relationship between security questionnaires and deal cycles
Security questionnaires are an essential part of an effective deal cycle—and one of its main obstacles at the same time.
What an average questionnaire completion process looks like
As important as questionnaires are for demonstrating sufficient security, they can significantly slow down deal cycles due to the extensive work involved.
Here’s what a typical security questionnaire workflow looks like:
- You receive a questionnaire from a prospect
- Your team reviews it to assess the security requirements
- The team assesses your current security policies and controls for information
- You fill out the questionnaire based on the assessment
- You finalize and send the questionnaire back to the prospect
Even if you meet the questionnaire’s prescribed standards, this process is typically time-consuming when done manually. Let’s take a look at some other challenges.
Security questionnaire completion: Challenges to anticipate
As you complete security questionnaires, you can expect the following challenges:
- Lack of preparation: Organizations with overworked security teams often complete security reviews at the last minute. This might lead to incomplete or unclear responses in the questionnaire.
- Extensive evidence collection: Your prospects will want to see proof of your security controls and their effectiveness, which requires you to gather numerous evidence documentation scattered across different channels.
- Manual and unsustainable workflows: Disparate security monitoring systems and inefficient tracking tools like spreadsheets fill your workflow with extensive busywork, extending the time necessary to complete a questionnaire.
- High questionnaire volumes: If you get a surge of prospects, you may not be able to keep up with the workload demands, which can lead to missed business opportunities.
- Triaging follow-up questions: Your prospects may have follow-up questions about your completed questionnaires, which can lead to a lengthy information exchange via emails.
- Challenging cross-functional communication: Sales teams have to collaborate with security, legal, compliance, and IT teams while handling questionnaires from prospects. Such scattered cross-functional communication can be time-consuming and might lead to incorrect or inadequate responses.
While these problems may seem pervasive, there is an effective solution to them—security questionnaire automation.
How questionnaire automation expedites deals
If you want to streamline your security questionnaire processes, the best practice is to leverage dedicated automation platforms. They leverage advanced technologies like AI and robust integrations to help your team streamline data gathering and provide accurate answers faster.
Over the past decade, industry leaders have shaped numerous useful features that benefit your workflow in many ways. Here are some key features that have transformed security workflows:
Strategic benefits of questionnaire automation
Questionnaire automation platforms unlock the following strategic benefits:
- Continuous improvements: Automation-enabled knowledge base solutions get continuously updated to include new responses to previously-answered security questionnaires. This enables you to instantly fill out relevant future questionnaires to scale the process.
- Higher efficiency: IT and security teams leverage automation to lighten their workload and reclaim their time to focus on other high-impact tasks.
- Enhanced security posture: A questionnaire automation solution lets you familiarize yourself with every important aspect of your security posture without extensive manual checks. Such insights make it easier to develop strategies for improving your security posture and scaling confidently.
- More trust and transparency: Questionnaire automation simplifies the process of proving security and compliance to prospects at any stage of the sales process, which maximizes your deal potential.
- Increased ROI: Questionnaire automation removes costly inefficiencies and lets you access and close more deals at a lower base cost, which results in a higher return on your security investments.
How to make your questionnaire automation process efficient
You can take the following four steps to automate your questionnaire workflows efficiently:
- Identify what can be automated: The scope of questionnaire automation can vary for different organizations. Ideally, you’d want to automate processes like questionnaire processing and response generation.
- Assign responsibilities: Make sure every team member knows who’s in charge of receiving questionnaires, analyzing security controls, filling out the questionnaire, and other relevant activities in your workflow.
- Establish clear timelines: Questionnaires can take a while to complete because of their comprehensive coverage. Furthermore, industry-standard questionnaires are extensive, with options like SIG covering more than 800 questions. When managing such a questionnaire, split the process into more digestible activities and set timelines for each to stay on track.
- Document everything: You should keep track of your questionnaire completion activities, security insights, and other information you might need for future reference. An automated knowledge base can simplify the process, so make sure to leverage it to collect relevant data to expedite future deal cycles.
{{cta_testimonial16="/cta-modules"}} | ComplyCube customer story
Shorten deal cycles with Vanta’s questionnaire automation
Vanta is an end-to-end trust management platform that simplifies and automates security workflows, including competing security questionnaires.
Vanta’s Questionnaire Automation comes with features designed to minimize manual work, such as:
- Automated questionnaire processing
- 73 percent coverage across security questions
- AI-enabled automated responses—with a 95 percent acceptance rate
- Centralized knowledge base for security information
- Multi-format questionnaire completion options to accommodate prospects’ preferences
By leveraging these features, you can complete security reviews up to 5 times faster and reduce scalability issues when exploring new sales opportunities.
By using Vanta’s Trust Center, you can deflect up to 87 percent of inbound security questionnaires altogether. Track security controls in real time and demonstrate your security posture to prospects and other stakeholders with minimal back-and-forth.
Since all crucial information is accessible from a single portal, this transparency can help finalize deal cycles faster. You can also demonstrate your security posture to internal stakeholders, third-party auditors, and other relevant parties as needed.
Watch this on-demand webinar to explore how the Trust Center can get you closer to your sales opportunities.
You can also schedule a custom demo for a tailored walkthrough of how Vanta can accelerate your questionnaire workflows.
{{cta_simple13="/cta-modules"}} | Questionnaire automation product page
Security Questionnaires
Close deals faster with security questionnaire automation
Security Questionnaires
Vetting vendor security is an important step during SaaS, IaaS, and PaaS procurement, and security questionnaires are a non-negotiable component of the process. They demonstrate your organization’s ability to protect its users in a diverse threat environment, which builds customer trust.
While security questionnaires can help you scale your business, they can also slow your team down due to the numerous inefficient manual and repetitive processes involved. You need a streamlined workflow to reap the benefits of security questionnaires fully without letting them hinder efficiency in deal cycles.
In this guide, we’ll learn about different workflow aspects of completing security questionnaires and explore how automation can support the process. We’ll go over the following:
- The relationship between questionnaires and deal cycles
- Different ways questionnaire automation expedites deals
- Key benefits of questionnaire automation
- Tips for streamlining your questionnaire workflows
Security questionnaires: The basics
Security questionnaires are sent and received during vendor due diligence processes to assess the security standing of your organization (which is a third party from your prospect's point of view). It aims to inform your prospects that your organization follows the necessary protocols to minimize risks, such as:
- Risks of operational disruptions (particularly those caused by security incidents)
- Compliance risks and related reputational challenges
- Financial risks tied to an organization’s security posture
In most cases, you’ll receive a questionnaire in the form of yes/no questions. You may either get a custom questionnaire developed by an organization or an industry-standard one like CAIQ or SIG. In many cases, the questionnaire might look like an extensive spreadsheet that requires a lot of evidence collection and manual effort to complete.
The questionnaire will enable your prospects to scrutinize numerous aspects of your organization’s security posture, including:
- Data storing, processing, and sharing protocols
- Technical security controls (firewalls, encryption, etc.)
- Access management
- Security policies and scalability
Due to the comprehensive nature of security questionnaires—and the fact that they are a requirement in almost every vendor or prospect deal—they might take quite some time to complete, regardless of the simple yes/no structure. You need a thorough understanding of your security posture to answer all questions confidently and show prospects that your organization has the necessary controls in place.
{{cta_withimage10="/cta-modules"}} | How to Turn Security into Revenue ebook
The complex relationship between security questionnaires and deal cycles
Security questionnaires are an essential part of an effective deal cycle—and one of its main obstacles at the same time.
What an average questionnaire completion process looks like
As important as questionnaires are for demonstrating sufficient security, they can significantly slow down deal cycles due to the extensive work involved.
Here’s what a typical security questionnaire workflow looks like:
- You receive a questionnaire from a prospect
- Your team reviews it to assess the security requirements
- The team assesses your current security policies and controls for information
- You fill out the questionnaire based on the assessment
- You finalize and send the questionnaire back to the prospect
Even if you meet the questionnaire’s prescribed standards, this process is typically time-consuming when done manually. Let’s take a look at some other challenges.
Security questionnaire completion: Challenges to anticipate
As you complete security questionnaires, you can expect the following challenges:
- Lack of preparation: Organizations with overworked security teams often complete security reviews at the last minute. This might lead to incomplete or unclear responses in the questionnaire.
- Extensive evidence collection: Your prospects will want to see proof of your security controls and their effectiveness, which requires you to gather numerous evidence documentation scattered across different channels.
- Manual and unsustainable workflows: Disparate security monitoring systems and inefficient tracking tools like spreadsheets fill your workflow with extensive busywork, extending the time necessary to complete a questionnaire.
- High questionnaire volumes: If you get a surge of prospects, you may not be able to keep up with the workload demands, which can lead to missed business opportunities.
- Triaging follow-up questions: Your prospects may have follow-up questions about your completed questionnaires, which can lead to a lengthy information exchange via emails.
- Challenging cross-functional communication: Sales teams have to collaborate with security, legal, compliance, and IT teams while handling questionnaires from prospects. Such scattered cross-functional communication can be time-consuming and might lead to incorrect or inadequate responses.
While these problems may seem pervasive, there is an effective solution to them—security questionnaire automation.
How questionnaire automation expedites deals
If you want to streamline your security questionnaire processes, the best practice is to leverage dedicated automation platforms. They leverage advanced technologies like AI and robust integrations to help your team streamline data gathering and provide accurate answers faster.
Over the past decade, industry leaders have shaped numerous useful features that benefit your workflow in many ways. Here are some key features that have transformed security workflows:
Strategic benefits of questionnaire automation
Questionnaire automation platforms unlock the following strategic benefits:
- Continuous improvements: Automation-enabled knowledge base solutions get continuously updated to include new responses to previously-answered security questionnaires. This enables you to instantly fill out relevant future questionnaires to scale the process.
- Higher efficiency: IT and security teams leverage automation to lighten their workload and reclaim their time to focus on other high-impact tasks.
- Enhanced security posture: A questionnaire automation solution lets you familiarize yourself with every important aspect of your security posture without extensive manual checks. Such insights make it easier to develop strategies for improving your security posture and scaling confidently.
- More trust and transparency: Questionnaire automation simplifies the process of proving security and compliance to prospects at any stage of the sales process, which maximizes your deal potential.
- Increased ROI: Questionnaire automation removes costly inefficiencies and lets you access and close more deals at a lower base cost, which results in a higher return on your security investments.
How to make your questionnaire automation process efficient
You can take the following four steps to automate your questionnaire workflows efficiently:
- Identify what can be automated: The scope of questionnaire automation can vary for different organizations. Ideally, you’d want to automate processes like questionnaire processing and response generation.
- Assign responsibilities: Make sure every team member knows who’s in charge of receiving questionnaires, analyzing security controls, filling out the questionnaire, and other relevant activities in your workflow.
- Establish clear timelines: Questionnaires can take a while to complete because of their comprehensive coverage. Furthermore, industry-standard questionnaires are extensive, with options like SIG covering more than 800 questions. When managing such a questionnaire, split the process into more digestible activities and set timelines for each to stay on track.
- Document everything: You should keep track of your questionnaire completion activities, security insights, and other information you might need for future reference. An automated knowledge base can simplify the process, so make sure to leverage it to collect relevant data to expedite future deal cycles.
{{cta_testimonial16="/cta-modules"}} | ComplyCube customer story
Shorten deal cycles with Vanta’s questionnaire automation
Vanta is an end-to-end trust management platform that simplifies and automates security workflows, including competing security questionnaires.
Vanta’s Questionnaire Automation comes with features designed to minimize manual work, such as:
- Automated questionnaire processing
- 73 percent coverage across security questions
- AI-enabled automated responses—with a 95 percent acceptance rate
- Centralized knowledge base for security information
- Multi-format questionnaire completion options to accommodate prospects’ preferences
By leveraging these features, you can complete security reviews up to 5 times faster and reduce scalability issues when exploring new sales opportunities.
By using Vanta’s Trust Center, you can deflect up to 87 percent of inbound security questionnaires altogether. Track security controls in real time and demonstrate your security posture to prospects and other stakeholders with minimal back-and-forth.
Since all crucial information is accessible from a single portal, this transparency can help finalize deal cycles faster. You can also demonstrate your security posture to internal stakeholders, third-party auditors, and other relevant parties as needed.
Watch this on-demand webinar to explore how the Trust Center can get you closer to your sales opportunities.
You can also schedule a custom demo for a tailored walkthrough of how Vanta can accelerate your questionnaire workflows.
{{cta_simple13="/cta-modules"}} | Questionnaire automation product page
Explore more Trust articles
Understanding security posture
Building and managing trust
Get started with trust
Start your trust journey with these related resources.
IDC Analyst Brief: How trust centers save time and accelerate sales
IDC outlines the many benefits trust centers can deliver for an organization and its customers as well as the key considerations for companies as they evaluate their trust center strategy.
.png)
Save time on security reviews with Questionnaire Automation & Trust Center
Join us to learn how Questionnaire Automation & Trust Center help security teams with questionnaires.
How Trust Centers Help Save Time and Accelerate Sales
Discover how trust centers enhance customer confidence, streamline security processes, and drive sales growth, based on IDC’s latest research.
