What is a SIG security questionnaire?
A SIG security questionnaire is a standardized information-gathering questionnaire used in vendor risk and third-party security reviews. SaaS teams should answer it with scoped claims and evidence.
SIG security questionnaire template with answers and evidence
Prepare Standardized Information Gathering questionnaire answers with evidence links, weak-answer checks, owner review, exceptions, and reusable answer-library fields.
SIG response rowGovernance to evidence
Question normalized
Approved answer
Evidence attached
Owner reviewed
Direct answer
A useful SIG questionnaire template should help you answer with current controls, evidence, exceptions, and owner approval, not just copy generic security claims.
Copyable SIG questionnaire answer rows
Use these rows to prepare a response library before a customer or procurement team sends the full questionnaire.
| SIG area | Question | Acceptable answer pattern | Evidence to attach | Red flag |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Governance | Who owns security policies, exceptions, and customer-facing security questionnaire answers? | Security, legal, privacy, product, and engineering owners are defined, and sensitive answers require owner review. | Policy owner list, approval workflow, exception register, answer-library owner field. | Sales or customer success can send security claims without review. |
| Access control | How is access granted, changed, reviewed, and removed? | Access follows documented approval, least privilege, MFA or SSO, periodic review, and offboarding controls. | Access control policy, IdP export, access review record, offboarding ticket. | The answer mentions least privilege but cannot prove reviews or offboarding. |
| Data protection | How is sensitive customer data classified, stored, encrypted, retained, and deleted? | Data classes, storage systems, encryption controls, retention periods, deletion paths, and exceptions are documented. | Data classification policy, retention schedule, encryption evidence, deletion procedure. | The answer says data is protected but does not define scope or retention. |
| Third-party risk | How are vendors and subprocessors reviewed before they process customer data? | Vendors are risk-tiered, reviewed before approval, tracked with purpose and data type, and reassessed on a defined cadence. | Vendor risk record, subprocessor list, DPA, risk-tiering criteria. | The team relies on vendor reputation without evidence or review dates. |
| Incident response | How are security incidents detected, escalated, investigated, and communicated? | The incident process defines severity, owner, evidence preservation, notification, customer communication, and lessons learned. | Incident response plan, tabletop record, notification process, postmortem template. | There is a policy but no tested escalation or customer notification workflow. |
| AI and automation | Do AI systems draft, route, or submit security questionnaire responses? | AI may assist only from approved answers and evidence, with human review for sensitive claims and clear logging of submitted answers. | AI use policy, answer-library source links, reviewer audit trail, submitted-answer log. | AI-generated answers are accepted because they sound plausible. |
Connect SIG answers to your workflow
Route SIG rows into your answer library so future customer questionnaires reuse reviewed answers instead of stale copies.
FAQ
Short answers for SIG security questionnaire response work.
How should I prepare SIG questionnaire answers?
Prepare a reusable answer library, map evidence to each answer, define owners, mark exceptions, review stale answers, and keep customer-specific notes separate from approved language.
What evidence is useful for SIG responses?
Useful evidence includes policies, SOC 2 sections, access review exports, incident response records, vulnerability tickets, subprocessor lists, DPAs, and owner approvals.
Can SIG answers be automated?
Parts of SIG response work can be automated, including question matching, evidence citation, stale-answer checks, and routing. Final sensitive claims still need human review.
Need a shortlist for your workflow?
Send the formats you receive, your current answer-library setup, and whether you need portal support. We will use those signals to prioritize the next comparison updates.