Efficiently responding to security questions requires more than just a set of data and someone who uses that data to respond. It requires various elements such as having up-to-date, clean and structured data, knowing how to manage and maintain that data, and being able to collaborate efficiently.
Therefore, we decided to divide the best-in-class practices for responding to security questionnaires into three chapters in order to cover all aspects. Each chapter will be published weekly including:
We’ve already explained how to build and maintain your data repository in the first and second chapter. In the last chapter, we’re going to talk about what it takes to make all of these elements function effectively. Even the perfect tool is useless without the people who operate it. Thus, what we need in the last step is teams who can manage, maintain, and oversee projects along with data.
In other words, there should be 3 main teams in order to optimize the performance of your AI security questionnaire tool. Those teams include:
Administrators or admins are the owner of the team who will operate in the software. Usually, admin is at the top hierarchy. Therefore, those people have the authority to manage the admin panel (to manage the access of each user). His/her main responsibilities will be monitoring overall performance and having regular meetings with Skypher’s technical teams to report issues or implement new features.
At Skpher, there are many features designed to help the admin monitor the performance and manage all users. Those features include:
Admin panel
Admin panel is a feature that mainly allows you to manage the access of each user. In general, there are two main roles including user and admin. However, you are free to create a new role and control the access. For example, you can create a role called “read-only” who has the right to only view the information. This person won’t be able to modify any data or make any changes whether it is documents, templates or previous projects.Apart from this, there are still other topics in this admin panel such as integration, teams, and product. Admin can click and view all statuses in there. For example, integration will display what software you’re currently integrating with, and product will show you how many different products you have on Skypher.
Analytics
Analytics is a product in itself that allows you to monitor the overall performance of responding to security questionnaires. In fact, this feature is not limited to only admin, but other types of users can also check analytics to see the overall performance of the project. There are two aspects on the analytics:
1. The holistic view
When you check analytics from the home page of the software, it will display all statuses and results of all projects. So, you can see details of questionnaires like how many questionnaires were already completed and details of the knowledge base like how many templates were created.
2. The individual view
You can also check the performance for each questionnaire by clicking on the analytics displayed on the top of a questionnaire. This will allow you to see details of that particular questionnaire, such as how many questions are answered and who are assigned to answer questions.
Feedback
Feedback is another feature designed to support users, especially admin. It allows users to create a ticket for a feature request or improvement. Every ticket will update its status such as “planned” to update users about their request. Moreover, there is another page in feedback called changelog. This page will update you on what is incoming, such as a new product or feature release.
Subject matter experts or SMEs are people who play one of the crucial roles in data maintenance. They are generally people who will keep policies and other security content up to date. For example, you might upload a lot of data from various departments on Skypher such as human resources, IT, and finance. Thus, it is important that you assign at least one person to maintain each particular data from each department.
There are several features that helps support SME at Skypher including:
Tag
Tag will allow you to categorize data. You can create tags, such as Require NDA, to label each template or document that you upload. By doing this, it will be easier to find and maintain.
Ownership
Ownership is a feature that allows you to assign a person who will maintain this particular data (including templates, documents, and etc.) This will help SME to know which template belongs to them.
Review cycle
Review cycle is one of our most important systems that help SME to know when it is the time to update or get rid of outdated data. The time can be customized. Once it expires, the system will notify SME to check and deal with that data. You can receive notification in Slack and Teams or straight to your mailbox.
AI-powered duplicate detection
This is a built in system of Skypher that will let you know if there are any duplicate documents or templates. Thus, you can decide whether to merge or delete one of them.
In addition to maintaining and updating data, SMEs can also assist other users by answering questions assigned to them in questionnaires. They can provide expert insights, clarify complex information, and offer guidance based on their specialized knowledge, ensuring that other users receive accurate and relevant responses to their questions.
Regular users are generally people who use the questionnaire automation tool on a daily basis. They are people who receive questionnaires and need to complete everything in order to send them back to their clients.
We provide various features that support regular users including:
Comment
The comment feature in Skypher allows users to exchange opinions, feedback, and questions in questionnaires. Our interactive tool promotes active participation and discussion among users, fostering a collaborative environment.
Mention
Mention is a feature that allows you to mention people in the comment. When you mention a person, the system will notify them of the mention. This helps facilitate discussions by directly involving relevant individuals. By using mentions, you can easily draw attention to specific comments, engage others in the conversation, and enhance collaboration within the platform.
Assign
Assign feature is similar to mention, but a bit stronger. Assign allows you to pass on questions to another person who you think is more qualified to answer. Instead of emailing or chatting, you can directly forward questions within the platform, ensuring a seamless and efficient workflow.
Apart from all these features that help support all types of users, at Skypher, we also offer premium customer service. We have customer service teams, who will always be ready to answer your questions and address any issues that you might have, based in both the US and Europe. You can just simply ping us via Slack or send us an email, we will get back to you generally in a few minutes.
In this last chapter, we have covered all that you need to effectively operate the security questionnaire automation tool, which is the final step of how to follow the best practices for automating your security questionnaires response process. Thank you so much for reading our articles. We will keep continuing to share interesting knowledge. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us here!
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