How to Fill a Security Questionnaire Fast (Without Stress)

If you run a B2B SaaS company, you know the feeling. You’ve just had a great demo with a prospective enterprise client. They love the product, the pricing looks good, and the champion is ready to sign.

Then comes the email: "Great! Can you just fill out this security questionnaire so we can get vendor approval?"

Attached is a spreadsheet with 300 rows of technical questions ranging from "Do you use multi-factor authentication?" to "What is your specific procedure for disposing of hard drives?"

Your heart sinks. You know this is going to take hours, maybe days, of your time. It’s boring, repetitive, and if you get it wrong, you lose the deal.

But it doesn't have to be this way. In this guide, we’ll show you how to fill out security questionnaires fast, without the stress, so you can get back to building your product and closing deals.

Why Do These Questionnaires Even Exist?

First, take a deep breath. It helps to understand why you are doing this.

Big companies aren't trying to annoy you. They have compliance requirements (like SOC 2, ISO 27001, or GDPR) that force them to vet their vendors. If they share customer data with you, they are responsible for what happens to that data.

The questionnaire is their way of checking if you are a safe pair of hands.

It’s a trust signal. Passing a security review proves you are a mature business.
It’s a gatekeeper. You can’t close the deal without it.
It’s standard. Every enterprise deal will have one.

Once you accept that this is a normal part of doing business, you can stop fighting it and start optimizing it.

Step 1: Centralize Your Security Answers

The biggest time-waster is searching for answers.

“Did we enable encryption at rest?” “Where is that penetration test report from last year?” “What did I tell the last customer about our backup policy?”

If you are digging through Slack messages, old emails, or random Google Docs every time a questionnaire comes in, you are doing it wrong.

Create a "Security Knowledge Base."

This can be a simple Notion page or a shared Google Doc. Every time you answer a technical question, copy the question and your answer into this document.

Group them by category:

Access Control
Data Encryption
Incident Response
Hr & Hiring
Infrastructure (AWS/GCP/Azure)

Next time you get a questionnaire, you can utilize Ctrl+F to find 80% of the answers immediately.

Step 2: Prepare Your "Standard" Security Package

Proactive founders don't wait for the questionnaire. They send their security info upfront.

Create a "Security Packet" that you can share with prospects early in the sales cycle. This should include:

A One-Page Security Overview: Briefly explaining your hosting, encryption, and authentication practices.
Compliance Certifications: If you have SOC 2 or ISO 27001, include the report (or a letter of attestation).
Pentest Summary: A letter from your pentest provider stating you are clean (don’t share the full list of vulnerabilities!).
A CAIQ-Lite or SIG Lite: These are standard, pre-filled questionnaires.

Sometimes, if you send this packet early, the security team will accept it instead of making you fill out their custom spreadsheet. Even if they don’t, it shows you are professional and prepared.

Step 3: Don't Lie (But Do Be Concise)

It is tempting to say "Yes" to everything to get the deal done. Don't do it.

If you say you have a Disaster Recovery plan and you don’t, and then you lose their data, you could be sued for fraud.

However, you don't need to write an essay for every answer.

Bad Answer: "Well, we usually use AWS and it has some built-in features, and I think Bob set up a firewall last week..."
Good Answer: "Yes. All customer data is encrypted at rest using AES-256 and in transit using TSL 1.2+."

Keep it short, technical, and confident. If you don't have a feature (e.g., "Do you support SAML SSO?"), be honest: "Not currently, but it is on our roadmap for Q3." Many security teams will accept a roadmap commitment for non-critical items.

Step 4: Automate the Pain Away

Let’s be honest. Even with a knowledge base, copying and pasting answers into a 300-row Excel sheet is miserable.

This is where automation comes in.

Tools like Luota are built specifically to solve this problem for small B2B SaaS teams. Luota uses AI to learn from your previous questionnaires and documentation. When you upload a new blank questionnaire, Luota fills in the answers for you automatically.

Instead of spending 4 hours on a questionnaire, you spend 10 minutes reviewing Luota’s suggestions.

It acts like your virtual security officer, remembering every technical detail so you don't have to. For founders who want to focus on sales rather than compliance paperwork, this kind of automation is a game-changer.

Step 5: Treat the Security Team as an Ally

Finally, a mindset shift. The person reviewing this questionnaire is a human being. They are often overworked and reviewing dozens of vendors at once.

Be responsive. Don't sit on the questionnaire for two weeks.
Use the comments. If a question is confusing (e.g., "Do you have a physical guard at your data center?" when you are fully cloud-hosted), add a comment explaining: "N/A - We are 100% hosted on AWS which provides physical security."
Ask for clarification. If a question makes no sense, ask them. It shows you care about being accurate.

Conclusion

Security questionnaires are a tax on enterprise sales. You have to pay it, but you don't have to overpay.

By centralizing your knowledge, preparing standard documents, and using tools like Luota to automate the heavy lifting, you can turn a painful bottleneck into a competitive advantage.

Speed matters. The faster you return that questionnaire, the faster you get the contract signed. Stop dreading the security review and start breezing through it.