Automated scanning tools are great but they’re not the whole story. There’s a smarter, faster way to assess your vendors.
Search for “third-party cyber risk management” today and you’ll quickly land on a familiar set of names: SecurityScorecard, BitSight, Black Kite. These automated vulnerability scanning tools have become the go-to answer for security teams looking to get visibility into their vendor ecosystem and for good reason.
But here’s the thing nobody says out loud: they’re not the whole solution.
Chances are, even if your organisation uses one of these platforms, you’re still sending vendors a security questionnaire. You know the one 100+ questions, a six-week turnaround, and a review process that quietly drains your team’s time and motivation.
There’s nothing wrong with security questionnaires. But the way most teams use them is quietly killing everyone involved.
The real problem with questionnaires
Security questionnaires aren’t going away. They capture nuances that automated scans can’t contractual obligations, data handling practices, incident response procedures. But the standard approach is broken in two directions at once.
| 100+ | 6 wks | < 1 hr |
Questions in a typical vendor questionnaire | Average time to receive and review responses | What it should take with the right approach |
For vendors, answering 100+ detailed questions is a significant burden especially when they’re fielding the same questions from dozens of customers. For your internal team, reviewing those answers, chasing supporting documents, and cross-referencing them against your own policies is even heavier work. And yet, at the end of all that effort, you often still don’t have the clarity you need.
A smarter way to work
This is exactly the problem 3rdcomply was built to solve. The idea is straightforward but genuinely powerful: instead of firing 100 questions at your vendor and waiting weeks, let AI do the heavy lifting first.
3rdcomply’s AI automatically answers your security questions based on documentation and information the vendor has already made publicly available their policies, certifications, security pages, and compliance statements. It doesn’t just extract the information; it evaluates it against your company’s own internal policies and standards, flagging gaps and misalignments before a single question is sent.
| Old approach | With 3rdcomply |
| Step 1 Send 100+ questions to vendor | Step 1 AI scans vendor’s existing materials |
| Step 2 Wait 4–6 weeks for responses | Step 2 Answers auto-matched to your policies |
| Step 3 Manually review every answer | Step 3 Send only 5 targeted follow-up questions |
The result? Instead of sending a 100 question questionnaire and waiting weeks, you end up sending five targeted follow-up questions only for the areas where information was missing or didn’t meet your standards. The entire process takes less than an hour.
Why this matters
This isn’t just an efficiency gain. When you reduce friction on both sides, vendors are more likely to engage thoroughly and honestly. Your team can focus on genuine risk decisions rather than administrative processing. And your security posture actually improves because you’re spending time where it matters.
Your internal question library doesn’t disappear either. It becomes reference material that informs the AI’s assessment, rather than a checklist you’re forcing vendors to manually work through. You keep the rigour; you lose the bureaucracy.
Security questionnaires should be a precision instrument, not a blunt one. Five well-aimed questions beat 100 scattered ones every time.
Third-party cyber risk management doesn’t have to be a painful, slow process for everyone involved. With the right tools, it can be fast, precise, and actually effective.
See 3rdcomply in action : www.3rdcomply.com