# How to answer a security questionnaire (SIG, CAIQ) faster > Vendor security questionnaires are a sales bottleneck. Here is a repeatable system to answer SIG, CAIQ and bespoke RFP security sections in a fraction of the time - without copy-paste errors. Source: https://olyteck.com/blog/answer-security-questionnaire-sig-caiq-faster Published: 2026-06-18 Author: Oleg Garasym, Olyteck (France, EU-hosted) Product: Olyteck Ask Topics: security questionnaire, caiq, sig, rfp, compliance License: free to quote with attribution to Olyteck and a link to the source URL. --- If your company sells to other businesses, you've met the **security questionnaire**: a 200-row spreadsheet a prospect's security team sends before they'll sign. SIG, CAIQ, a bespoke RFP annex, or a customer's own template - they all ask the same things in slightly different words, and they all land on the same one or two people who already have a day job. Done by hand, each one eats days and stalls the deal. Here's how to make them fast and consistent. ## Why they're painful - **Repetition with variation.** 80% of questions repeat across questionnaires, but the *wording* changes, so naive copy-paste produces answers that don't quite fit - and reviewers notice. - **Scattered source material.** The real answers live in your information security policy, your DPA, your sub-processor list, past questionnaires, and people's heads. - **High cost of being wrong.** An over-claim ("yes, we're ISO 27001 certified" when you're *working toward* it) is worse than a careful "in progress" - it surfaces in due diligence. ## Step 1 - Build a single source of truth Before automating anything, gather your **canonical answers** in one place: - Information security policy (or its exec summary) - Data Processing Agreement and sub-processor list - Hosting, encryption, access-control and retention facts - Certifications and their honest status (certified / in progress / not pursued) - Your last 2-3 completed questionnaires This is the corpus every future answer should be generated *from* - not reinvented. ## Step 2 - Answer from your documents, not from memory The fastest reliable method is to **draft each answer from your own source documents**, then review - rather than writing from scratch or pasting from a random old file. The pattern: 1. Read the incoming question. 2. Retrieve the relevant passage from your canonical corpus. 3. Draft an answer in the questionnaire's own terms. 4. A human reviews and approves. This keeps answers **consistent with what you've actually committed to** elsewhere, which is exactly what a sharp reviewer is checking for. > The goal isn't to remove the human - it's to remove the *blank page*. Reviewing a grounded > draft is minutes; writing from zero is hours. ## Step 3 - Keep answers where the work happens Security questionnaires arrive as **Excel** and RFP security sections as **Word**. A workflow that forces you to leave those tools, paste into a web app, and paste back is friction that guarantees errors. Drafting in place - inside the spreadsheet or document - keeps formatting intact and the audit trail clean. ## Step 4 - Watch your own data boundary Ironically, the tool you use to answer security questionnaires is itself subject to one. Before you feed your internal policies into anything, confirm: - Where is the content processed, and under what data-residency terms? - Is your content used to train third-party models? (It should not be.) - Who are the sub-processors, and can you name them to *your* reviewer? If you can't answer those about your own tooling, you're creating the exact risk your customers are screening for. ## A repeatable system - One canonical answer corpus, kept current - Draft-from-documents, human-review workflow - Work inside Word/Excel where the questionnaire lives - An honest certification status (in-progress beats over-claiming) - A tool whose own data handling you can defend Get this in place once and the next questionnaire stops being a fire drill. The first one still takes real effort; every one after reuses the corpus you built - which is the whole point.