Vendor Risk Assessment Questionnaire Template (PDF Download)

Managing vendor risk should be a primary concern for any organization that utilizes third-party vendors. Reviewing a vendor’s security practices is critical for ensuring compliance with critical standards including a Third-Party Risk Management component, such as NIS2, HIPAA, DORA, and the GDPR.

Structured vendor risk assessment questionnaires are among the most effective tools for evaluating and mitigating third-party risks. These questionnaires examine a vendor’s security posture, data handling practices, and compliance efforts so cybersecurity teams can make informed decisions to protect their organization’s assets and customer data.

What is a vendor risk assessment questionnaire?

A Vendor Risk Management questionnaire (also known as a third-party risk assessment questionnaire) is designed to help your organization identify potential weaknesses among your third-party vendors and partners that could result in a data breach, data leak, or other type of cyber attack.

Vendor risk assessment questionnaires are typically organized into four sections:

1. Information security and privacy
2. Physical and data center security
3. Web application security
4. Infrastructure security

Why are third-party risk assessment questionnaires important?

Third-party risk assessment questionnaires are essential tools for assessing potential risks and ensuring data privacy standards with new vendors before forming partnerships. These questionnaires offer a structured and consistent method to evaluate vendor security postures as part of a third-party risk management (TPRM) program, especially in industries with strict regulatory requirements (such as HIPAA for healthcare organizations).

Related: Creating a Vendor Risk Assessment Framework (6-Step Guide)

Security questionnaires play a pivotal role in third-party risk assessments by collecting data about a vendor's security control strategy. The data collected from security questionnaires creates a window into a vendor's security practices, contributing to the definition of their security posture. A fundamental rule of vendor security assessments is to combine as many data sources as possible to produce the most accurate vendor risk profile. 

Risk assessments ensure each vendor’s information security standards contribute to a proactive incident response and disaster recovery strategy.

Other vendor security data sources commonly combined with security questionnaires include automated scanning results, previously completed questionnaires, certifications, and information from Trust and Security pages.

Watch this video to see how multiple vendor security data streams can be consolidated into a single third-party risk assessment workflow.

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What are the downsides of vendor risk assessment questionnaires?

While valuable, vendor risk questionnaires come with a variety of challenges. These security questionnaires are notoriously labor-intensive to manage and offer only a snapshot of a vendor’s cybersecurity posture throughout its lifecycle.

Thankfully, these problems can easily be addressed with a two-stage strategy:

1. Combine point-time risk methods with continuous monitoring

A vendor questionnaire alone will only collect data about a vendor’s cybersecurity practices on the date of the risk assessment. Any critical security risks surfacing between risk assessment schedules will not be detected, leaving your organization exposed to unknown data breach threats during these periods.

However, when combined with a continuous monitoring solution, such as security ratings, security teams achieve real-time awareness of the company’s evolving third-parry risk exposure, allowing vendor risks to be promptly detected and remediated before they develop into costly data breaches.

2. Leverage security questionnaire automation

Replace legacy vendor risk assessment methods, such as spreadsheets and manual processes, with automation technology specifically designed to improve the speed and accuracy of vendor risk assessments. Security questionnaire automation also establishes the foundation of a scalable TPRM program, allowing a risk management policy to scale alongside even the most ambitious business growth objectives.

To start leveraging questionnaire automation, sign up to UpGuard’s Questionnaire AI automation tool, Trust Exchange, for free.

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How can my organization build a robust third-party risk management program?

The first step towards building a robust third-party risk management program is to use an industry-standard questionnaire and then adapt it to your organization’s needs. It’s difficult to clearly understand a vendor’s internal network security, data security, and information security without asking for additional information, which is why questionnaires are a great starting point for risk assessment processes.

Here are five industry-standard security assessment methodologies you can start with:

1. CIS Critical Security Controls (CIS First 5 / CIS Top 20):  The Center for Internet Security (CIS) offers a set of 20 prioritized controls designed to protect systems and data from cyber threats. These high-impact controls align with major frameworks like NIST, ISO 27000, PCI DSS, and HIPAA.
2. ‍Consensus Assessments Initiative Questionnaire (CAIQ): Developed by the Cloud Security Alliance, CAIQ provides a standardized set of questions to evaluate security controls for cloud providers (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS).
3. ‍NIST 800-171: NIST 800-171 provides guidelines to protect controlled unclassified information (CUI) in nonfederal organizations, with 14 security objectives. Compliance is required for organizations working with the DoD, GSA, and NASA. This free questionnaire template can help you confirm each vendor's level of alignment with NIST 800-171.
4. ‍Standardized Information Gathering Questionnaire (SIG / SIG-Lite): Created by the Shared Assessments Program, SIG assesses vendor cybersecurity, data security, and resiliency; SIG-Lite is a simplified version for low-risk vendors.
5. ‍VSA Questionnaire (VSAQ): Published by the Vendor Security Alliance in 2016, VSAQ is designed to monitor supplier security practices across six sections, including data protection, security policies, and supply chain compliance.

You can extract thousands of potential questions from these frameworks and adapt them to align with your organization's needs and priorities. However, security questionnaires are only part of the solution.

Investing in a real-time vendor monitoring tool allows organizations to streamline assessments, track security posture changes, and request remediation for high-risk issues. These tools can detect threats such as DMARC, CVE vulnerabilities, phishing, malware, domain hijacking, SSL, DNSSEC weaknesses, and other cyber risks.

Why you should consider using security ratings alongside security questionnaires

Security ratings allow risk management and security teams to monitor vendor security posture continuously. Unlike questionnaires, security ratings are automatically generated, frequently updated, and provide a shared language for both technical and non-technical stakeholders. Gartner even predicts that cybersecurity ratings will soon be as important as credit ratings in evaluating business relationships, becoming a standard due diligence measure for both service providers and procurers.

These ratings address gaps left by traditional assessment methods, such as SIG or VSA questionnaires, which are time-intensive and can lack accuracy. Security ratings offer an independent, up-to-date verification of questionnaire results, enhancing reliability.

According to Gartner, cybersecurity ratings will become as important as credit ratings when assessing the risk of existing and new business relationships.

Learn about UpGuard's security rating >

Vendor security questionnaire template for risk assessments

The following third-party security assessment questionnaire can be used as a template for your vendor risk assessments.

Information security and privacy questions

• Does your organization process personally identifiable information (PII) or protected health information (PHI)?
• Does your organization have a security program? If so, what standards and guidelines does it follow?
• Does your information security and privacy program cover all operations, services, and systems that process sensitive data?
• Who is responsible for managing your information security and privacy program?
• What controls do you employ as part of your information security and privacy program?
• Please provide a link to your public information security and/or privacy policy.
• Are there any additional details you would like to provide about your information security and privacy program?
• What is your process for data classification? What security measures are in place to protect each classification level?
• How do you ensure remotely accessed sensitive data (such as data accessed from mobile devices) is secured?
• Do you employ any anonymizing techniques, such as data masking? If so, describe the systems in which these techniques are implemented.
• Do any of your third-party vendors have access to your sensitive data? If so, what categories of sensitive data do they have access to?
• How do you ensure your third-party vendors that process your sensitive data have proper cybersecurity measures in place?
• What user authentication techniques or access control strategies are you implementing to prevent unauthorized access?
• Do you implement Data Loss Prevention (DLP) strategies to defend against exfiltration?
• How do you ensure that only the minimal personal information is collected and processed? How do you define “minimal level”?

Physical and data center security questions

• Are you in a shared office?
• Do you review physical and environmental risks?
• Do you have procedures in place for business continuity in the event that your office is inaccessible?
• Do you have a written policy for physical security requirements for your office?
• Is your network equipment physically secured?
• What data center providers do you use, if any?
• How many data centers store sensitive data?
• What countries are data centers located in?
• Are your data centers certified by any industry standards (e.g., ISO 27001, SSAE 16)?
• Are there any additional details you would like to provide about your physical and data center security program?
• Where is sensitive information physically stored?
• Is physically stored sensitive information segmented from general access network regions?
• How do you ensure the security of any personal data transferred between physical devices?
• Do you have any surveillance cameras in place? Where are they positioned, and how long is the footage retained?
• Are any of your surveillance devices IoTs?
• How often do you conduct physical security audits?

Web application security questions

• What is the name of your application? And what does it do?
• Do you have a bug bounty program or other way to report vulnerabilities?
• Does your application have a valid SSL certificate to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks?
• Does your application require login credentials?
• How do users get their initial password?
• Do you have minimum password security standards?
• How do you store passwords?
• Do you offer single sign-on (SSO)?
• How can users recover their credentials?
• Does your application employ a defense in depth strategy? 
• How do you regularly scan CVE for known vulnerabilities?
• How do you do quality assurance?
• How do you ensure data is transferred securely between APIs and other third-party integrations?
• Do you have a Web Application Firewall (WAF) implemented?
• How do you track end-of-life web server software and outdated web dev libraries?
• Do you employ penetration testing to test the integrity of sensitive data security controls?
• Who can we contact for more information related to your web application security?
• How do you ensure the timely installation of web application security patches?
• What types of data processing activities do you perform for different types of users (visitors, customers, etc.)?
• How do you ensure separation of duties in your application development and deployment processes?
• How do you gather user consent to process personal data?
• What measures are in place to prevent session hijacking?
• Do you implement input validation measures to prevent input-based attacks, such as SQL injection, keylogging, and Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)?

Infrastructure security questions

• Do you have a written network security policy?
• Have you ever experienced a data breach? If so, what was the impact, and how was it addressed?
• Do you use a VPN?
• Do you employ server hardening?
• How do you keep your server operating systems patched?
• Do you log security events?
• What operating systems are used on your servers?
• Do you back up your data?
• How do you store backups?
• Do you segment your network to obfuscate access to sensitive resources?
• Do you test backups?
• Who manages your email infrastructure?
• How do they prevent email spoofing? e.g. DMARC
• Do you employ intrusion detection and prevention systems (IDPS)?
• How do you handle end-of-life hardware and ensure data is securely wiped?
• How do you protect employee devices from ransomware and other types of malware?
• What operating systems do employee devices use?
• Are employee devices encrypted?
• Are user logins managed in a centralized solution?
• How do you ensure secure configurations for all network devices, including routers, switches, and firewalls?
• How do you monitor for suspicious activities or infrastructure anomalies?
• Do you have an Incident Response Plan plan in place? How often is it tested?
• Do you have a disaster recovery plan in place? How often is it tested?
• How often do you review and update firewall rules and configurations?
• Do you employ a third party to test your infrastructure security?
• Who can we contact regarding infrastructure security?
• What security measures are in place to defend against malware injections, ransomware attacks, and other malicious threats?

FAQs about Vendor Risk Assessment questionnaires

What is a third-party risk assessment questionnaire?

A third-party risk assessment questionnaire is part of a formal vendor risk assessment. These questionnaires give security analysts deeper insights into each vendor's specific cyber and regulatory risks. Questionnaires map to different standards, from frameworks like ISO 27001 to regulations like PCI DSS and HIPAA.

What is a vendor risk assessment questionnaire? 

A vendor risk assessment questionnaire is a tool used to evaluate the security practices, data handling, and compliance of third-party vendors.

What is a TPRM questionnaire? 

A TPRM (Third-Party Risk Management) questionnaire assesses the risks associated with third-party vendors, focusing on cybersecurity, data protection, and regulatory compliance.

How do you create a vendor risk assessment questionnaire?

To create a third-party risk assessment questionnaire, you need to:

• Choose a specific cybersecurity or regulatory standard you want to evaluate a vendor's security posture against - some examples include. ISO 27001, NIST CSF, PCI DSS, HIPAA, and NIST 800-53.
• Design questions that strategically uncover misalignment risks against your chosen security or regulatory standard. 
• Have a system for determining the severity of uncovered risks and their potential impact on your organization. Such a system will either be based on qualitative or quantitative risk measurement methods. 
• Implement remediation processes for rapidly addressing discovered risks exceeding your third-party risk appetite. 

How do you write a risk assessment questionnaire? 

To write a risk assessment questionnaire, define key risk areas, create questions covering security, compliance, and data privacy, and ensure alignment with industry standards.

What are the main challenges of vendor risk assessment questionnaires?

Conventional vendor risk assessment questionnaire processes pose significant challenges to third-party risk assessment efficiency due to the following common bottlenecks:

• Inefficient vendor communication workflows occurring via email rather than within a Vendor Risk Management solution.
• Generic questionnaires failing to consider each vendor's unique cybersecurity context.
• Repetitive questionnaires require a significant amount of time to complete. This issue is the most frustrating for vendors, who end up continuously delaying such questionnaires in favor of more critical tasks.

How do you calculate vendor risk? 

Vendor risk is calculated by evaluating a vendor’s security controls, the potential impact on business operations, and the likelihood of a security incident based on questionnaire responses and security ratings.

What are the four main sections of a third-party risk assessment? 

The four main sections typically include security policies, data protection, compliance, and incident response.

What are the main challenges of a vendor risk assessment questionnaire? 

The main challenges include the time required to administer, inconsistent responses, and difficulty verifying accuracy.

What are the 9 steps to conducting a vendor risk assessment?

• Step 1: Gather data about the vendor's security practices
• Step 2: Identify all high-risk vendors
• Step 3: Send all high-risk vendors a comprehensive risk assessment
• Step 4: Review vendor questionnaire responses against your risk management framework
• Step 5: Establish the basis of a risk treatment plan for the vendor
• Step 6: Consolidate your risk treatment strategy in the form of a risk assessment
• Step 7: Present the risk assessments for critical vendors to stakeholders for review
• Step 8: Establish an ongoing risk assessment schedule prioritizing critical vendors
• Step 9: Continuously monitor critical vendors