3 Ways to Speed Up Your Response to Security Questionnaires with Skypher

We all know that dealing with security questionnaires can be a nightmare as it requires many resources from different teams and a lot of time to complete. Some questionnaires can take a few days to a few weeks. However, given their complexity and time-consuming nature, security questionnaires remain crucial for businesses, especially for those who work in the IT and technology sector in 2024. (See how it’s important here in our previous article.) 

Nowadays, there are many solutions in the market trying to speed up the response to security questionnaires. Some rely solely on automation while some rely on a combination between human and AI power. Nevertheless, each solution still has some pros and cons that users need to consider carefully. For example, some solutions may be good, but the interface is not user friendly, which is still time consuming for sales teams who need to spend a lot of time learning how to use and managing their data in complicated software.

‍Skypher’s main focuses ‍

At Skypher, we don’t focus only on optimizing the speed and efficiency of our software, but also on ensuring that our users can easily navigate and use the product. Here is the three main focuses of Skypher:

• Speed: We invest heavily in our proprietary AI, which can complete a questionnaire that might take a few days in just a few minutes with minimum human interactions. 
• Quality: We use the latest AI and LLM technology that are capable of quickly retrieving accurate information, reformulating it (optional) without changing the key content, and identifying the source of the information to avoid any hallucination from Generative AI as this is a very sensitive topic (security & compliance).‍
• Simplicity: We have a friendly user interface that supports all types of users. The software and process are simple, which allows users to learn and navigate themselves easily from the beginning to the end without specific training.

How do we help 100+ clients all around the world to speed up the process?

We help more than 100 clients, including Fortune 500 companies such as Adobe and TeamViewer, to get rid of the bottleneck in the sales process. Our clients reported that they can save a lot of time since they use Skypher. Let’s see how Skypher can help many companies worldwide speed up their process of responding to security questionnaires in 3 ways:

1. Centralize and organize your security content in one place

Skypher allows users to centralize all security content in the knowledge base as it’s easier and more efficient to manage and maintain. You can upload different type of documents to build your own knowledge base such as:

• Previous questionnaires
• Security documents (including policies, certifications, and white papers)
• Standard questionnaires CAIQ / SIG

With a knowledge base built on an extensive security framework (SOC2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, GDPR, NIST or PCI) that covers everything asked in security reviews, you can respond to all security questions and keep track of all your evaluations in one place. Skypher’s system also uses a vector database which allows the system to vectorize and index your information for rapid learning and efficient information retrieval (RAG). Therefore, the system can match existing paragraphs in documents in your library with questions from questionnaires. You can see how accurate your responses are by checking the accuracy score as well. 

Besides, we have an automated maintenance system. Thanks to our AI which is capable of detecting duplicate templates in the knowledge base, alerting for expired content, and notifying in batches for reviewing documents and templates, your information will always stay up-to-date. For example, you can set an expiration date of 1 year. After 1 year, the information won’t be retrieved and used again by the system.

‍2. Automate the responding process from start to finish

At Skypher, we do our best to maximize automation as much as possible. We understand and pay attention to how much time is valuable for a business. That’s why we came up with the innovative tool that breaks the old-fashioned process of responding to security questionnaires which requires loads of time and dozens of experts to complete it. We automate each process as below:

• Import: All you have to do is to click upload the file and fill in basic information, such as date and name. The AI will analyze the document and identify each section including questions, answers, instructions, etc. automatically. You just need to click confirm to go to the next step. 
• Response: All questions will be answered by AI based on the information in your knowledge base. (You can choose if you want to activate the Generative AI to have more dynamic responses or choose original ones from your database without any changes.) You are free to modify any responses and attach any evidence as a document. Otherwise, you just need to check and click approve all to go to the last step.
• Export: After you approve everything, you can download the file. The system will automatically prepare you a zip file with the questionnaire and all attachments in it. 

We help a lot of businesses manage DDQ, privacy and security questionnaires, and RFP from various platforms. We also support different formats, including Excel, Word, and others from online portals without changing anything in the format, so you can send them back to clients easily with confidence. 

‍3. Collaborate and structure your response process

Collaboration is one of the significant factors in completing security questionnaires as no one can know everything. Therefore, our solution comes with built-in tools that facilitate broad communication and workflow in real time. In Skypher software, you can:

• Assign people who are responsible for particular questions or tasks.
• Comment on questionnaires to give some feedback and ask for help.
• Have a notification on each step of responding to security questionnaires in the channel you prefer.
• Integrate with different softwares, like Slack and Salesforce, without breaking the existing work cycle.

We also have the Skypher browser extension to facilitate responding to security questionnaires everywhere, such as in your mailbox. Therefore, people with different levels of access from different teams can work together seamlessly and be sure that there will be no communication breakdowns or workflow interruption.

As Skypher, we’re always dedicated to revolutionizing the way of responding to security questionnaires. We want to help businesses remove this bottleneck and boost sales with our cutting-edge tools. Book a demo here today and see the remarkable transformation in the process by yourself.