The fastest way to finish a security questionnaire

You've been here before. A customer—or worse, a prospect you really want to close—sends over a security questionnaire. You open it. It's 200+ questions. Some are easy ("Do you have a password policy?"). Some are absurd ("Describe your quantum-resistant encryption roadmap"). All of them need answers by Friday.

Security questionnaires have become the toll booth of B2B sales. Enterprise customers won't sign a contract until procurement and security have reviewed your responses. The questions feel repetitive because they are—most questionnaires pull from the same standard frameworks. But that repetition is actually your friend, because it means you can build a system to handle them efficiently.

Here's how to get through a security questionnaire without losing your mind or your weekend.

First, understand what you're dealing with

Not all questionnaires are created equal. Before you start answering questions, figure out what type of questionnaire you're facing. This determines your strategy.

The SIG questionnaire (Shared Assessments Standardized Information Gathering) is probably the most common. The "Lite" version is manageable. The full version is a beast. If you get a SIG Full, block real time on your calendar.

CAIQ stands for Consensus Assessments Initiative Questionnaire, published by the Cloud Security Alliance. It's designed for cloud providers and focuses heavily on cloud-specific controls like data isolation, multi-tenancy security, and API security.

Custom questionnaires are a mixed bag. Some are well-designed and focus on what actually matters. Others are clearly copied from a template the company found online, with questions that make no sense for your situation. You'll answer both the same way, but the good ones are faster because the questions are clearer.

Don't start answering yet

Your first instinct is to jump in and start filling in boxes. Resist it. Spend 15 minutes scanning the whole questionnaire first.

This reconnaissance pass tells you what you're dealing with. A questionnaire that's 50% "Yes/No" questions with space for comments is very different from one that wants detailed narratives for everything. A questionnaire heavy on physical security questions when you're a cloud-native company is going to have a lot of N/A answers.

Look for patterns as you scan. Which questions can you answer with a simple "Yes"? Which ones need documentation you may or may not have? Which questions are clearly irrelevant to your business model? Which questions are duplicates asked slightly different ways? Most questionnaires have 3-5 questions about access control, 3-5 about incident response, 3-5 about data protection. They're asking the same thing in different ways.

Also check the format requirements. Some questionnaires want you to fill in specific cells in an Excel spreadsheet. Some want narrative responses in a Word document. Some have online portals you need to use. Know the output format before you start, because reformatting at the end is painful.

Sort questions into four buckets

After your scan, mentally categorize every question into one of four buckets. This determines your attack order.

Quick wins are questions you can answer in under a minute. "Do you have multi-factor authentication enabled for all users?" Yes. "Do you have an information security policy?" Yes. "Do you encrypt data in transit?" Yes, TLS 1.2 and 1.3. These are your momentum builders. Knock them out fast and you'll feel like you're making progress.

Documentation requests are questions where they want to see something—a policy document, a screenshot of a configuration, an architecture diagram, a SOC 2 report. You either have the documentation or you don't. If you have it, attach it and move on. If you don't, note it and keep going. Don't stop to create documentation in the middle of filling out the questionnaire.

Narrative answers are questions that require you to explain how something works in your organization. "Describe your incident response process." "Explain how you manage access to production systems." These take time to write well. They're where most of your effort will go, so save them for when you can focus.

Not applicable questions are ones that don't apply to your business. You still need to explain why they don't apply, but that's usually straightforward once you understand what the question is actually asking.

Tackle them in that order: quick wins first, then documentation requests, then narrative answers, then N/A explanations. This approach builds momentum and ensures you don't waste time on complex answers that you might not even need if you run out of time.

Build a library of golden answers

If this isn't your first questionnaire, you should be copying and pasting from previous answers. Same question about your incident response process? Use the same answer. Same question about how you handle encryption keys? Use the same answer.

Create a document—we call it a "golden answers library"—with your best responses to common questions. After each questionnaire, update the library with any new answers you had to write. After handling 5-10 questionnaires, you'll have pre-written responses for 60-70% of typical questions.

The most common questions across questionnaires tend to fall into predictable categories:

Access control: How do you provision and deprovision user accounts? How do you handle privileged access? What's your password policy? Do you use MFA?

Data protection: How do you encrypt data at rest and in transit? Where is customer data stored? How do you handle data deletion requests? Do you have a data classification policy?

Incident response: What's your incident response process? How quickly do you notify customers of incidents? Do you have an incident response team?

Business continuity: What's your backup strategy? Do you have a disaster recovery plan? How often do you test it?

Vendor management: How do you assess third-party vendors? Do you have a vendor risk management program?

For each of these areas, write a thorough answer once, then customize it slightly for each questionnaire. The core answer stays the same—only the details change based on what the specific questionnaire is asking.

Be honest about gaps

Here's a truth that many companies miss: security reviewers can smell evasiveness from a mile away. If you don't have something, they'll figure it out eventually. It's better to be upfront about gaps than to obscure them with vague language.

Instead of trying to hide what you don't have, acknowledge the gap and explain what you do instead or what your plan is to address it.

Bad answer: "Our organization maintains comprehensive logging capabilities across all systems." This sounds good until someone asks for the logs and you can't produce them.

Good answer: "We currently log authentication events, privileged user actions, and system errors across our production environment. Application-level logging is being implemented in Q2 as part of our SOC 2 preparation." This is honest about current state while showing you have a plan.

The second answer might seem worse because it admits a limitation. But experienced security reviewers know that no company has perfect security. They're not looking for perfection—they're looking for competence and honesty. A company that acknowledges gaps and has plans to address them is more trustworthy than a company that claims everything is perfect.

Some gaps are dealbreakers for certain customers. That's okay. Better to find that out early than to waste everyone's time only to have the deal fall apart during a security review.

Know when and how to say N/A

Some questions won't apply to your business. That's fine and expected. But how you handle N/A questions matters.

Wrong approach: Just leaving the field blank or writing "N/A" with no explanation.

Right approach: "N/A – As a fully cloud-hosted SaaS application, we do not maintain physical data centers or on-premises infrastructure. Our infrastructure is hosted on AWS, which maintains SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 certifications for physical security controls."

The reviewer needs to understand why the question doesn't apply to you. Otherwise they'll assume you're dodging it or didn't understand the question. A good N/A explanation shows that you understood what they were asking and explains why it's not relevant to your situation.

Common legitimate N/A scenarios include physical security questions for cloud-native companies, on-premises infrastructure questions for SaaS providers, specific compliance requirements that don't apply to your industry, and questions about capabilities you don't offer. Just make sure you explain the context.

Understand what reviewers actually care about

Security questionnaires can feel like bureaucratic exercises, but there are real humans on the other side trying to make a decision. Understanding what they actually care about helps you write better answers.

Most security reviewers are trying to answer three fundamental questions: Can this vendor protect our data? What's the risk if they get breached? Are they mature enough to be a reliable partner?

They're not reading every answer in detail. They're scanning for red flags and evidence of maturity. A company with SOC 2 certification, clear incident response procedures, and honest answers about their security posture looks very different from a company with vague answers and no third-party validation.

The questions that matter most to reviewers typically involve data handling practices (where does their data go, who can access it, how is it protected), incident response (what happens if something goes wrong), access control (can the vendor control who sees what), and third-party validation (has anyone independent verified these claims).

If you're going to spend extra time polishing any answers, polish these. The question about your physical security monitoring might be less important than the question about how you handle customer data.

The math on doing it yourself vs. outsourcing

Security questionnaires are a tax on your time. Every hour you spend on one is an hour not spent on actual work—building product, closing deals, supporting customers. It's worth doing the math on whether doing them yourself makes sense.

A typical 200-question questionnaire takes 8-12 hours to complete properly. That includes the initial scan, drafting answers, gathering documentation, internal reviews, and formatting for submission. At $150/hour loaded cost for a senior engineer or security person, that's $1,200-$1,800 in internal time per questionnaire.

If you're getting one questionnaire per month, you might decide it's worth handling internally. If you're getting 3-4 per month, that's potentially one full-time equivalent just doing questionnaire work. At that volume, it makes sense to either hire someone dedicated to the task, invest in questionnaire automation software, or outsource to specialists.

We fill out security questionnaires for $990 per questionnaire, up to 300 questions, delivered in 5 business days. You send us the questionnaire and any documentation you have. We send it back done, formatted to your customer's specifications, ready to submit. More details here.

For many companies, outsourcing the occasional questionnaire while building their golden answers library is the right balance. You get the questionnaire done without the weekend work, and you build up your internal capabilities over time.

Common mistakes to avoid

After seeing hundreds of questionnaires, we've noticed patterns in what goes wrong:

Answering too quickly. The pressure to respond fast leads to sloppy answers. A thoughtful response that takes an extra day beats a hasty one that raises more questions.

Inconsistent answers. If question 47 asks about your backup frequency and you say "daily," and question 156 asks about data recovery and you say "weekly backups," the reviewer will notice. Scan for consistency before submitting.

Over-promising. Don't claim capabilities you don't have. If your incident response plan hasn't been tested, don't say it's "regularly tested." Reviewers may ask for evidence.

Ignoring context. The same question can require different answers for different customers. A healthcare company asking about HIPAA compliance needs a different answer than a retail company asking about PCI compliance.

Missing attachments. If a question asks you to "attach your information security policy," attach it. Missing documentation is a common reason for follow-up questions that delay the process.

Frequently asked questions

How long should questionnaire answers be?

As long as they need to be to answer the question, but no longer. For yes/no questions, a sentence or two of context is usually enough. For narrative questions, 2-3 paragraphs is typical. If you're writing a page-long response to a single question, you're probably over-explaining.

What if I don't know the answer to a technical question?

Flag it for someone on your team who does know. Don't guess. Incorrect answers are worse than saying "we need to verify this and will follow up."

Should I share our SOC 2 report with everyone who asks?

Generally yes, but require an NDA first if your report contains sensitive details. Most companies have a process for sharing SOC 2 reports under NDA, and customers expect this.

What if the deadline is impossible?

Communicate early. Most deadlines have some flexibility if you explain the situation. "We're working through your questionnaire and will have responses by [date]" is better than going silent and missing the deadline.

Should I use a questionnaire automation tool?

If you're handling more than 2-3 questionnaires per month, probably yes. Tools like OneTrust, Whistic, or SafeBase can help you maintain a knowledge base and auto-fill common answers. But they require upfront investment to set up, so they only pay off at scale.

If you're working on your SOC 2 certification, many of the controls you implement will directly answer common questionnaire questions. And if you need help with cyber insurance applications, the evidence you gather for that overlaps significantly with questionnaire responses.

The bottom line: Security questionnaires are tedious but not complicated. Scan first to understand what you're dealing with. Sort questions into buckets and tackle them in order. Build a library of golden answers you can reuse. Be honest about gaps—reviewers respect honesty more than perfect answers. Explain your N/As so reviewers understand the context. Do it enough times and you'll build a system that makes each questionnaire faster than the last.