Vendor security reviews · SaaS & technology
Vendor Security Review & Questionnaire Support for B2B SaaS Companies
This service answers the questionnaire an enterprise prospect just sent you, not the one you send a vendor. A SIG, CAIQ or 300-row custom spreadsheet arrives mid-deal, deadlines are tight, and the wrong answer either stalls the sale or commits you to something engineering cannot back up. We build the answer library, verify what you can honestly claim, and get the response back before the deal cools.
Reviewed by the Privacy Horizon team · Last reviewed
What you're protecting
What has to be right in a questionnaire response
The document leaving your building has to match what your engineering team actually does, not what sounds reassuring.
Consistency with your SOC 2 report or gap review
Answers cannot contradict a current SOC 2 report or an in-progress readiness assessment, since a mismatch is exactly what a sharp reviewer on the buyer's side is trained to catch.
Accurate sub-processor and DPA claims
Questions about your sub-processor list, data residency and DPA terms need answers that match the actual published list, not an aspirational version of your vendor governance.
Realistic technical control claims
Answers about encryption, access control, tenant isolation and logging need sign-off from whoever built the systems, since an engineer asked to defend an inaccurate answer in a follow-up call is a worse outcome than an honest gap disclosed upfront.
AI feature disclosure
If your product embeds OpenAI, Anthropic or another AI provider, questionnaires increasingly ask directly how that vendor is assessed and what customer data reaches it — a section that needs its own accurate answer, not a generic security paragraph.
Version control across deals
Each response needs a record of what was sent and when, so contradictions do not surface later when the same buyer's renewal team compares this year's answers to last year's.
Regulatory map
Why the buyer's questionnaire is the real gate, not a regulator
No Canadian statute requires you to fill out a SIG or CAIQ. The requirement comes entirely from the customer's own procurement standard.
SIG as the dominant standardized format
The Shared Assessments SIG questionnaire is the format most large enterprise buyers default to, and its structure rewards vendors who maintain a current, organized answer set rather than starting fresh each time.
CAIQ for cloud-specific reviews
The Cloud Security Alliance's CAIQ is common among buyers focused specifically on cloud service risk, and overlaps enough with SIG content that a shared answer library serves both.
OSFI B-10 driving bank customer questionnaires
When the buyer is a federally regulated financial institution, their questionnaire is shaped by third-party risk expectations around audit rights, incident notification and subcontracting, so answers need to speak that language specifically.
PHIPA electronic service provider status
A hospital or health-sector buyer's questionnaire often reflects Ontario's electronic service provider expectations under PHIPA regulation, which asks pointed questions a generic SIG response will not fully answer.
What goes wrong
What a weak questionnaire response actually exposes
An inaccurate answer is not just an audit risk — it is a warranty the moment a deal closes.
Claiming controls that do not hold up
Answering that MFA is enforced everywhere when it is not mirrors the exact gap behind the Snowflake customer-account compromise campaign — a claim that becomes a contract breach the moment reality diverges from the questionnaire.
Undisclosed sub-processors
Leaving a vendor off the disclosed sub-processor list because a questionnaire response predates its addition creates a contractual gap that surfaces at the worst possible time — during an incident involving that exact vendor.
Vendor-of-the-vendor blind spots
Okta's 2023 support-system breach is a reminder that a buyer's questionnaire about your vendors is really asking about your vendors' vendors too, a layer many responses skip entirely.
Answers that age out silently
A questionnaire answered accurately eighteen months ago, before an architecture change or a new sub-processor, becomes inaccurate without anyone updating it — until a renewal review catches the gap.
Our vendor security reviews for b2b saas companies
What our vendor security review support covers
A gap review against the control framework you already use or are building toward, documentation support, and hands-on response help when a questionnaire is due now.
Gap review against your control posture
We compare what a typical SIG or CAIQ asks against your actual controls, flagging where the honest answer needs a caveat or where a real gap needs remediation before the response goes out.
Reusable answer library
A maintained set of accurate answers to the questions that recur across nearly every questionnaire, so each new request starts from a verified base instead of a blank spreadsheet.
Evidence packaging for attachments
Support organizing the policies, diagrams and evidence a thorough questionnaire asks to see attached, pulled from your existing SOC 2 or readiness documentation where it exists.
Trust centre and summary materials
Guidance on what belongs in a public-facing trust centre versus what stays behind an NDA, so the volume of one-off questionnaire traffic drops over time.
Direct response support under deadline
Hands-on help completing the specific questionnaire in front of you when the deal timeline does not allow for a slower build-out first.
How the engagement runs
How we handle an incoming questionnaire
Built to move at the speed the deal requires.
Step 1
Triage the format and deadline
We identify whether it is SIG, CAIQ or custom, how long the response window is, and which sections can pull from your existing answer library immediately.
Step 2
Verify against current reality
Draft answers are checked against your actual controls, current sub-processor list and any SOC 2 report, with engineering pulled in only where their sign-off is genuinely needed.
Step 3
Deliver and support follow-up
The completed response goes back inside your deadline, and we support any clarifying questions the buyer's security team raises afterward.
Step 4
Fold answers back into the library
New or refined answers update the reusable library, so the next questionnaire moves faster than this one did.
What it costs
What drives the cost of questionnaire support
Cost depends on questionnaire length and format, how much of an existing answer library and SOC 2 documentation already exists to draw from, and how tight the response deadline is. A company answering its first custom 300-row spreadsheet from scratch needs more support than one updating a maintained library for a routine renewal.
This work is frequently delivered alongside SOC 2 or ISO 27001 readiness, since the same gap review and documentation feed both, and can also sit inside a Virtual Privacy Office or vCISO retainer for companies facing recurring questionnaire volume. We quote standalone support after seeing the specific questionnaire and your current documentation.
B2B SaaS Companies: Vendor security reviews questions, answered
Start by mapping which sections your existing policies and any SOC 2 gap review already answer, then verify the remaining sections against your actual controls with engineering input where needed. Build the answers into a reusable library as you go, since a SIG response done once properly saves substantial time on every future deal.
Fill out whichever the buyer sends; you rarely choose. Buyers focused on cloud-specific risk tend to send CAIQ, while broader enterprise procurement teams tend to default to SIG, but the underlying content overlaps enough that one well-maintained answer library serves both.
Pull as much as possible from an existing answer library and current SOC 2 documentation first, verify only what has changed since the last response, and flag genuine gaps honestly rather than guessing — an inaccurate answer discovered later damages the relationship far more than a disclosed limitation does now.
No, but it changes the shape of the work. Without SOC 2, each answer needs independent verification against your actual controls; with a current SOC 2 report, most technical sections can simply reference it, which is why many companies start SOC 2 readiness after their first difficult questionnaire experience.
Answer based on what data actually reaches the AI provider, what contractual terms govern that provider's use of it, and whether that provider is on your published sub-processor list. Buyers are asking this question more often as products embed AI features, and a vague answer draws more follow-up than a precise one.
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About this service
Answers & guides
- How does a startup pass an enterprise vendor security review?
- How do we prepare for a customer security questionnaire?
- How do you assess the privacy and security risk of an AI vendor?
- How a Startup Passes Its First Enterprise Vendor Security Review
- Building a Third-Party Vendor Risk Assessment Program That Scales
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