What is the SIG Questionnaire? A Guide to SIG Compliance for High-Growth Businesses

Every sales team has seen this scenario play out… You’re about to close an enterprise deal, then, an email lands in your inbox from the prospect's procurement team. The subject line is "Security Questionnaire."

Attached is a 126 question SIG Lite spreadsheet.

Suddenly, the deal grinds to a halt. Panic sets in. Your sales lead starts frantically Slacking senior engineers, pulling them from critical product sprints to answer questions.

If you want to ensure questionnaires don’t kill your deal velocity, you need to build a system that transforms security from a blocker into an advantage.

This guide is the playbook for building that engine.

What You Need to Know about the SIG Questionnaire

The Standardized Information Gathering (SIG) questionnaire is a comprehensive framework created by Shared Assessments to provide a deep, standardized view of a vendor's security controls. It’s become an essential part of the Third-Party Risk Management (TPRM) and due diligence process for a large number of organizations.

The SIG consists of risk-focused questions that are mapped to frameworks and guidelines like NIST, ISO 27001, PCI DSS, SOC 2, and GDPR and aims to give potential partners insights into your security posture and risk management practices.

There are three types of SIG questionnaires:

• SIG Lite: Often used for initially vetting or assessing lower-risk vendors, the SIG Lite questionnaire contains 126 questions.
• SIG Core: The SIG Core questionnaire contains 855 questions that cover 19 different risk domains. If you handle sensitive customer data or provide a business-critical service, this is the questionnaire you should expect to see.
• Custom: If they want to focus on specific areas, organizations can also create unique questionnaires based on questions from SIG.

SIG isn’t the only vendor risk management assesment framework out there. Other options include CAIQ and VSAQ.

How Often Is SIG Updated?

Shared Assessments will typically update SIG annually to reflect updated industry standards or new threats.

What’s Covered by the SIG?

The SIG measures security risks across 21 risk control areas (or “domains”):

• Access Control
• Application Security
• Artificial Intelligence (AI)
• Asset and Information Management
• Cloud Hosting Services
• Compliance Management
• Cybersecurity Incident Management
• Endpoint Security
• Enterprise Risk Management
• Environmental, Social, Governance (ESG)
• Human Resources Security
• Information Assurance
• IT Operations Management
• Network Security
• Nth Party Management
• Operational Resilience
• Physical and Environmental Security
• Privacy Management
• Server Security
• Supply Chain Risk Management (SCRM)
• Threat Management

SIG Questionnaire Example Questions

The SIG questionnaire is a configurable set of questions used to assess cyber risk, information security, and anything else related to the 21 domains listed above. Here are some example questions you may find in a SIG questionnaire:

Access Control

• Is multi-factor authentication (MFA) required for all administrative and remote access to the corporate network?
• Are user access rights reviewed on at least a quarterly basis to ensure the principle of least privilege is maintained?
• Is there a formal policy and procedure for revoking access for terminated employees and contractors within 24 hours?
• Are all passwords required to meet a minimum complexity standard (e.g., length, character types) and stored in an encrypted format?

Data Protection

• Is all customer data classified according to its sensitivity level?
• Is all customer data encrypted at rest using industry-standard algorithms (e.g., AES-256)?
• Is all customer data encrypted in transit over public networks using strong protocols (e.g., TLS 1.2 or higher)?
• Are there data loss prevention (DLP) tools in place to monitor and block unauthorized exfiltration of sensitive data?

Incident Response

• Is there a formal, documented Incident Response Plan (IRP)?
• Does the IRP include procedures for notifying affected customers and regulatory bodies in the event of a data breach?
• Is there a dedicated incident response team with clearly defined roles and responsibilities?
• Are all security incidents logged, tracked, and analyzed to identify root causes and prevent recurrence?The Real Cost of a SIG Questionnaire Isn’t the Answers, It’s the Chaos

How to Systemize SIG Questionnaire Responses

When each questionnaire is tackled as a one-off, it creates cross-functional chaos — pitting your sales and engineering teams against each other. The result is a standoff that plays out in Slack channels and emergency Zoom calls while the product roadmap slows down, and the sales cycle gets longer.

If you want to build a fluid GTM engine, you need to be prepared to handle questionnaires, this means building systems that can scale without stealing essential engineering hours from your tech teams.  

The key to successfully scaling questionnaire responses is about building a straightforward, repeatable process.

Step 1: Centralize Knowledge

Your first move is to create a single source of truth. This doesn’t mean a messy Google Drive folder filled with previous questionnaire responses, it should ideally be a living knowledge base containing your most up-to-date answers, along with supporting evidence like security policies, network diagrams, and recent audit reports.

Having a knowledge base in place means your team doesn’t need to scramble to find answers every time a new questionnaire lands.

Step 2: Define Clear Roles and Responsibilities

Questionnaires become blockers for so many hypergrowth businesses because they often land in a void between your engineering/IT team and GTM/sales team. If you want to streamline your questionnaire responses, they need to have clear ownership from intake to delivery.

The person (or team) in charge of delivering your questionnaire responses should be responsible for managing the workflow, not necessarily having to know every answer.

Then, make sure to build clear escalation paths for each of the risk domains covered in the SIG so that anyone responsible for questionnaires knows who to speak with internally regarding that area of the business. For example, your head of engineering may own infrastructure security questions. This clarity eliminates confusion and creates accountability.

Step 3: Implement a Repeatable Workflow

Another reason questionnaires cause chaos is because each is treated as its own individual project. That makes sense when you’re going from zero to one and haven’t had to handle questionnaires before, but as you start to chase enterprise sales, you need to systemize your response process

Every questionnaire should follow the same predictable path from intake to delivery. This turns the process from a chaotic fire drill into a well-oiled machine. The person assigned to lead questionnaire responses handles the initial triage, consults with your knowledge base of internal subject matter experts where needed, and ensures that you deliver clear responses every single time.

Step 4: Turn Every Questionnaire into an Asset

Your response engine should get smarter with every questionnaire you complete. After each submission, your quarterback should harvest any new or improved answers and add them back into your internal knowledge base. This creates a powerful feedback loop that continuously improves the quality and speed of your responses over time.

Manual Processes vs. Automation: Choosing Your SIG Solution

As you scale your security questionnaire responses, many companies turn to tools offering questionnaire libraries. These are incredibly helpful in enabling your business to go from handling questionnaires sporadically to scaling up to tens if not hundreds of questionnaires per month.

But eventually, even the most efficient internal response engine hits a scaling limit. Your team gets bigger, you’re selling into more complex enterprises, and the volume of questionnaires becomes a full-time job.

Workstreet provides the only end-to-end, human-in-the-loop service designed to completely remove the questionnaire bottleneck. We operate in any format and across every portal, which is why hyperscale companies like Clay and Cursor use Workstreet to ensure a deal never stalls waiting on a security response.

Stop Answering, Start Systemizing

Stop treating SIG questionnaires as a compliance chore. Instead, see them as a systems problem that, when solved, unlocks revenue velocity and speeds up your sales pipeline.

By shifting your focus from frantically answering questions to building a systematic response engine, you turn a major source of pain into a competitive advantage.

Want to discuss how Workstreet can help? Book a call with an expert here.