Vendor security reviews · SaaS & technology
Vendor Security Review & Questionnaire Support for MSPs & IT Consultancies
Vendor security review for an MSP or IT consultancy runs two directions at once: answering the SIG or CAIQ questionnaires clients now send the firm, and assessing the RMM, backup and distributor vendors the firm's own service depends on. The trigger is usually a client questionnaire arriving with a deadline, an insurer asking about vendor oversight, or the realization that the firm has never reviewed its own RMM or backup provider the way it expects clients to review theirs. We build the answer library and run the review both ways.
Reviewed by the Privacy Horizon team · Last reviewed
What you're protecting
What vendor review has to cover in both directions
A firm that only ever answers questionnaires, and never runs them on its own vendors, has half a program.
Inbound questionnaire responses
A maintained answer library covering SIG, CAIQ and common custom formats, so each new client questionnaire draws from consistent, accurate answers instead of starting from a blank page.
RMM and PSA vendor assessment
Review of ConnectWise, Kaseya, NinjaOne, Datto, N-able or Atera, and the PSA platform layered on top, for security posture, incident history and how quickly they patch disclosed vulnerabilities.
Backup platform review
Assessment of Veeam, Cove or Datto backup arrangements, since these vendors hold full copies of every client's most sensitive data and deserve the same scrutiny clients apply to the firm.
Distributor and CSP relationship review
Evaluation of the Pax8 or Ingram distributor relationship and the Microsoft CSP tenancy itself, since a compromise there reaches every downstream customer through the firm's own account.
Contradiction resolution across accounts
A process for handling two clients whose questionnaires ask for incompatible commitments, so the firm isn't promising conflicting things in different contracts.
Regulatory map
Why questionnaires and vendor review now cut both ways
The standards clients apply to the firm are increasingly the same ones the firm should be applying to its own vendors.
SIG as the industry-standard format
The Standardized Information Gathering questionnaire, in full or Lite form, is what many enterprise and public-sector clients now send an IT provider instead of drafting a bespoke form.
CAIQ for cloud-hosted vendors
The Cloud Security Alliance's Consensus Assessments Initiative Questionnaire is the reference format for reviewing cloud-hosted RMM, PSA and backup vendors, useful in both directions.
AA22-131A's contract-language expectation
The joint advisory expects MSPs and their customers to write security obligations into contracts, which only works if someone actually reviews whether a vendor meets those obligations before signing.
OSFI B-10's subcontractor visibility
A federally regulated client's third-party risk program expects visibility into the firm's own subcontractors and vendors, not just the firm itself, which makes the firm's vendor review part of the client's compliance chain.
What goes wrong
What an unreviewed vendor relationship has already cost this sector
The firm's own vendors are part of its attack surface, and this sector has direct precedent for what happens when that's left unchecked.
A support tool trusted by default
Okta's 2023 support-system breach leaked session data through a tool customers trusted without much scrutiny, the exact blind spot a vendor review of RMM and PSA support access is built to close.
An RMM vendor's own zero-day
The Kaseya VSA compromise in July 2021 originated in the vendor's own software, not the MSPs using it, showing why vendor review has to include the vendor's disclosed vulnerability and patch history, not just its marketing claims.
A vendor's patch-response speed
CVE-2024-1709 became a known exploited vulnerability within days, and firms that had never reviewed how quickly their remote-access vendor communicates and patches critical issues found out the hard way.
Inconsistent answers across client questionnaires
A firm without a maintained answer library tends to give slightly different answers to similar questions on different forms, and a sharp-eyed reviewer comparing two responses can turn that inconsistency into a bigger question than the one actually asked.
Our vendor security reviews for msps & it consultancies
What our vendor security review covers for an MSP
Both sides of the relationship: how the firm answers, and how the firm checks.
Questionnaire response support
Direct help completing SIG, CAIQ and custom client questionnaires, drawing from a maintained answer library kept consistent with the firm's actual controls.
Own-vendor risk assessment
Structured review of the RMM, PSA, backup and distributor vendors the firm depends on, covering security posture, incident history and contractual protections.
Consistency review across accounts
A check that answers given to different clients don't contradict each other, and that commitments made in one questionnaire are ones the firm can actually keep everywhere.
Evidence organization
Policies, certifications and prior questionnaire responses organized so future requests can be answered faster, rather than each one starting the search from scratch.
How the engagement runs
How vendor review runs for an MSP's client and vendor mix
Structured to keep pace with however many questionnaires arrive in a given month, while still reviewing the firm's own stack on a schedule.
Step 1
Build the answer library
We compile accurate, current answers to the questions clients ask most often, checked against the firm's actual controls rather than aspirational ones.
Step 2
Respond to inbound requests
New questionnaires draw from the library, with gaps flagged and answered rather than guessed at under deadline pressure.
Step 3
Review the firm's own vendors
RMM, PSA, backup and distributor relationships are assessed on a set schedule, not only when a client happens to ask about them.
Step 4
Update as the stack changes
The answer library and vendor assessments are revised whenever the firm changes tools or a vendor discloses a new incident or vulnerability.
What it costs
What drives vendor review cost for an MSP
Cost tracks questionnaire volume and vendor count. A firm fielding several enterprise or public-sector questionnaires a quarter, on top of reviewing five or six core vendors, needs more ongoing support than one answering the occasional short form.
Vendor security review is available as a standalone engagement and is also delivered on an ongoing basis inside a Virtual Privacy Office retainer, which suits firms fielding questionnaires regularly. We quote based on questionnaire frequency and the vendor list that needs reviewing.
MSPs & IT Consultancies: Vendor security reviews questions, answered
A maintained answer library, built once from the firm's actual controls and updated as they change, lets most questionnaire responses draw from existing, accurate answers rather than being researched fresh under deadline. The remaining work becomes mapping the library to whatever specific format, SIG, CAIQ or a custom spreadsheet, the client happens to use.
It depends on the client's own risk tier for the engagement rather than the firm's size: SIG Lite is a shorter, higher-level set of questions, while the full SIG goes deeper into specific control areas and is more common from larger enterprise or regulated clients. An MSP handling healthcare or financial-services accounts should expect the full version from at least some of its client base.
The same categories a client questionnaire would ask about: security posture, incident history, patch cadence and contractual protections, applied to the RMM provider, backup platform and distributor the firm actually relies on. Most firms have never formally done this for their own vendors even while asking clients' vendors to clear the same bar.
It varies significantly. A general small-business client might send a short custom form, while a healthcare, financial-services or public-sector client typically sends a longer SIG or CAIQ-based questionnaire with deeper follow-up questions specific to their regulatory obligations. The answer library needs to flex across that range rather than assuming one format fits all.
Flag it before responding to either. If one client's contract commits the firm to a data-retention period that conflicts with another client's requirement, that needs resolving at the contract or process level, not by giving two incompatible answers and hoping nobody compares notes.
It narrows the work rather than eliminating it. A current SOC 2 report answers many of the underlying questions a questionnaire is really asking, but most clients still want the questionnaire completed in their own format, so the report becomes the evidence base the answer library draws from, not a substitute for the form itself.
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About this service
Answers & guides
- How do we prepare for a customer security questionnaire?
- How does a startup pass an enterprise vendor security review?
- What is SOC 2, and does my business need it?
- What is PIPEDA, and does it apply to my business?
- How a Startup Passes Its First Enterprise Vendor Security Review
- Building a Third-Party Vendor Risk Assessment Program That Scales
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