You've seen it before. A 200-question spreadsheet lands in your inbox. The vendor needs it completed by Friday. Your team spends 20 hours pulling documentation, coordinating with IT, and carefully crafting answers that will satisfy the customer's security team.
Three months later, another company sends an almost-identical questionnaire. You copy-paste 80% of the answers from last time.
This is the state of vendor risk management in 2025.
And it's not working for anyone.
The Security Questionnaire Problem
Security questionnaires have been the backbone of third-party risk management for over two decades. The logic seems sound: before trusting a vendor with your data, ask them about their security practices.
But the modern reality of questionnaire-based vendor assessment is broken in fundamental ways:
Problem 1: Point-in-Time Snapshots in a Continuous Threat Landscape
A security questionnaire captures a vendor's security posture at a single moment. But security isn't static:
- Vendors deploy new features weekly that may introduce vulnerabilities
- Employee turnover changes who has access to what
- Infrastructure evolves as companies scale
- New CVEs are discovered daily that may affect vendor systems
- Compliance certifications can lapse
By the time you've processed a vendor's questionnaire responses, reviewed them, and made a decision, the information is already stale. The security posture you approved may no longer exist.
When the SolarWinds breach was discovered in December 2020, the company had passed countless security assessments. Their SOC 2 was current. Their questionnaire responses were comprehensive. None of it detected the sophisticated supply chain attack that had been active for months.
Problem 2: Self-Reported Data Is Inherently Unreliable
Questionnaires ask vendors to describe their own security practices. This creates obvious problems:
- Aspirational answers: Describing policies that exist on paper but aren't consistently followed
- Interpretation flexibility: "Yes, we encrypt data" could mean TLS in transit only, or full disk encryption, or field-level encryption – all very different
- No verification: There's no practical way to validate most responses
- Best-case presentations: Vendors understandably highlight strengths and minimize weaknesses
Problem 3: Questionnaire Fatigue Is Real
Ask any security team at a SaaS company about questionnaires, and you'll hear the same story:
"We receive 15-20 questionnaires per month. Each takes 10-20 hours to complete properly. We've had to hire dedicated staff just to answer questionnaires."
– Security Director, Series C SaaS Company
This fatigue has predictable consequences:
- Copy-paste responses: Teams maintain answer banks and paste with minimal customization
- Junior staff assignments: Questionnaire completion becomes entry-level work
- Template hunting: Vendors look for past responses to similar questions rather than current practices
- Delayed responses: Questionnaires sit in queues, slowing down procurement cycles
Problem 4: Lack of Standardization Creates Chaos
Despite efforts like SIG, CAIQ, and VSA to standardize questionnaires, the reality is chaos:
- Every large customer has their own "standard" questionnaire
- Questions are worded differently even when asking the same thing
- Scoring and interpretation vary wildly
- Custom questions get added for industry-specific concerns
- Different formats (Excel, Word, web forms, PDFs) require different handling
What Actually Matters in Vendor Risk
If questionnaires aren't the answer, what is? The key is shifting focus from what vendors say to what vendors do and what evidence exists.
Evidence Over Assertions
Instead of asking "Do you have an incident response plan?", modern TPRM asks:
- Can we see your SOC 2 Type II report that includes incident response testing?
- When was your last penetration test, and what did it find?
- What does your public breach notification history look like?
- Are there any active CVEs affecting your infrastructure?
Continuous Over Point-in-Time
Modern vendor risk management monitors continuously:
- Certificate transparency logs for SSL/TLS changes
- DNS and infrastructure changes
- Security rating fluctuations
- News and breach notifications
- Compliance certification status
Context Over Checklist
Not every vendor presents the same risk. A marketing email tool with no PII access is different from a HRIS system with employee SSNs. Modern TPRM applies appropriate scrutiny based on:
- Data types the vendor will access
- Integration depth (API access vs. web-only)
- User population (all employees vs. small team)
- Business criticality
- Regulatory context
❌ Traditional Approach
- 200-question spreadsheet
- 2-4 week completion time
- Self-reported answers
- Point-in-time snapshot
- Same process for all vendors
- Annual reassessment
✓ Modern Approach
- Evidence-based verification
- Minutes to initial assessment
- External data sources
- Continuous monitoring
- Risk-tiered process
- Real-time alerting
See Modern Vendor Assessment in Action
Get an instant risk assessment for any vendor. No questionnaires. No waiting. Just actionable intelligence.
Try Free Assessment →The Elements of Modern TPRM
1. Automated Evidence Collection
Instead of asking vendors about their security practices, modern platforms gather evidence directly:
- Public security posture: SSL configurations, security headers, DNS settings
- Compliance certifications: SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA attestations
- Privacy documentation: Privacy policies, data handling disclosures
- Corporate information: Funding, headcount, market presence
- Security ratings: External security scoring signals
2. AI-Powered Analysis
Modern TPRM uses AI to:
- Parse and analyze vendor documentation at scale
- Identify red flags in terms of service and privacy policies
- Compare vendor practices against regulatory requirements
- Generate risk scores based on multiple data sources
- Surface relevant findings without manual review
3. Continuous Monitoring
Once a vendor is approved, monitoring continues:
- Alerts when certificates change or expire
- Notifications of security incidents or breaches
- Tracking of compliance certification renewals
- Monitoring of security rating changes
- Detection of infrastructure or ownership changes
4. Contextual Risk Assessment
Not all vendors need the same scrutiny. Modern platforms tier vendors by:
- Critical: Access to sensitive data, deep integration, business-critical function
- High: Some sensitive data access, moderate integration
- Medium: Limited data access, standard business tools
- Low: No sensitive data, minimal integration
The Path Forward
Security questionnaires won't disappear overnight. For high-risk vendors and heavily regulated industries, they may remain part of the process. But they should be the exception, not the default.
The future of vendor risk management is:
- Evidence-based: Verify, don't just ask
- Continuous: Monitor, don't just assess
- Intelligent: Automate analysis, focus human effort on decisions
- Proportionate: Apply appropriate scrutiny based on actual risk
- Fast: Enable business velocity, don't impede it
Security questionnaires were designed for a world with fewer vendors, slower change, and no alternative. That world no longer exists. Modern TPRM platforms can assess vendors in minutes instead of weeks, monitor continuously instead of annually, and verify claims instead of just accepting them.
Transform Your TPRM Program
If your vendor risk management still relies primarily on spreadsheet questionnaires, you're working with outdated tools. The vendors you assess certainly aren't standing still – they're shipping code daily, changing infrastructure weekly, and evolving their security practices continuously.
Your assessment methodology should evolve too.
Ready to Modernize Your Vendor Risk Process?
See how RRR provides instant vendor risk assessments with continuous monitoring, AI-powered analysis, and evidence-based verification.
Start Free Assessment →