Security Questionnaire Automation: SIG, CAIQ, HECVAT Complete Guide

The Security Questionnaire Problem

If you sell B2B software, you know the pain. Every enterprise prospect sends a security questionnaire before signing. And they're getting longer—the average SIG Core now has 800+ questions.

Worse, each prospect uses a slightly different format. One sends SIG Lite, another sends CAIQ, a third has their own 15-tab Excel monstrosity. Your security team is drowning.

Understanding the Major Frameworks

SIG (Standardized Information Gathering)

Created by Shared Assessments, SIG is the most common enterprise security questionnaire:

• SIG Lite: ~150 questions, basic security assessment
• SIG Core: 800+ questions, comprehensive third-party risk assessment
• Covers: Access control, data protection, incident response, business continuity

CAIQ (Consensus Assessments Initiative Questionnaire)

Published by the Cloud Security Alliance, CAIQ focuses on cloud-specific controls:

• 300+ questions across 17 control domains
• Aligned with CCM (Cloud Controls Matrix)
• Common for SaaS and cloud infrastructure vendors

HECVAT (Higher Education Community Vendor Assessment Toolkit)

If you sell to universities, you'll see HECVAT:

• HECVAT Lite: ~75 questions for low-risk applications
• HECVAT Full: 250+ questions for systems handling sensitive data
• Focuses on FERPA compliance and student data protection

The Traditional Approach (And Why It Fails)

Most companies handle security questionnaires like this:

1. Sales receives questionnaire from prospect
2. Sales forwards to Security/Compliance team
3. Security team opens the last completed questionnaire
4. Copy-paste answers one by one, adapting as needed
5. Loop in engineering for technical questions
6. Review, format, and send back

Time required: 8-20 hours per questionnaire. The problem: This doesn't scale. And when answers are outdated (your last pentest was 6 months ago), you're sending incorrect information.

The Automated Approach

Modern security questionnaire automation uses AI to match questions to your existing documentation:

Step 1: Build Your Security Knowledge Base

Upload your core security documents once:

• SOC 2 Type II report
• Penetration test results
• Information Security Policy
• Business Continuity Plan
• Data Processing Agreement template
• Previous completed questionnaires (your best answers)

Step 2: AI Matches Questions to Answers

When you upload a new questionnaire, AI reads each question and finds the most relevant answer from your knowledge base. Unlike keyword matching, semantic search understands that "Do you encrypt data at rest?" and "What encryption methods protect stored information?" are asking the same thing.

Step 3: Human Review and Export

Your security team reviews AI-generated answers, makes edits where needed, and exports directly to the original Excel format. What took 15 hours now takes 2.

Best Practices for Security Questionnaire Management

1. Keep your knowledge base fresh: Update after every audit, pentest, or policy change
2. Create a "golden" questionnaire: Maintain one master SIG with perfect answers as your template
3. Track question frequency: The questions you get most often should have the best-crafted answers
4. Maintain an exceptions log: Document any security controls you don't have and why

Stop drowning in security questionnaires. Try Velocibid free and complete your next SIG in under 2 hours.