Top Platforms Offering Vendor Risk Assessment Questionnaire Templates & Management
Dealing with vendor risk is a critical task, and having the right vendor risk assessment questionnaire template is the first step. But how do you efficiently manage the entire process, from sending questionnaires to analyzing responses and monitoring ongoing risk? Many organizations are turning to specialized platforms to streamline this complex but essential function. This listicle explores some of the top solutions that provide robust questionnaire capabilities, helping you find the right fit for your vendor risk management program.
1. ProcessUnity Vendor Risk Management
ProcessUnity offers a comprehensive Third-Party Risk Management (TPRM) platform designed to automate and streamline the entire vendor lifecycle. Their solution helps organizations manage vendor risk with automated questionnaires, putting an end to inefficient paper surveys and spreadsheets.
Details: ProcessUnity VRM allows risk managers to create, schedule, and deploy questionnaires with various sections, questions, and response types. The platform can automatically scope assessments, so vendors only receive relevant questions, and they can complete these via a cloud-based portal. It also features built-in calculations, scoring, and workflows, including options for Inherent Risk, Automated Scoping, and Assessment Review Ratings. The platform supports industry-standard questionnaires like SIG Core and SIG Lite from Shared Assessments. ProcessUnity also boasts the Global Risk Exchange, which provides access to a vast library of over 18,000 attested vendor assessments and 360,000 curated vendor risk profiles, potentially eliminating the need to send new questionnaires for many common vendors.
Key Features: Automated questionnaire deployment, customizable questionnaires, pre-built best-practice configurations, industry-standard questionnaire support (SIG), Global Risk Exchange for pre-completed assessments, AI-powered Evidence Evaluator to scan documents and auto-complete questionnaires.
Pricing: Pricing for small and medium-sized businesses (up to $500M in revenue, 1,000 employees) starts at $25,000. For detailed plans, they encourage requesting a demo.
Ideal User/Use Case: Organizations of all sizes looking to automate and standardize their vendor risk assessment process, from initial onboarding to ongoing monitoring, with a particular advantage for those who can leverage the Global Risk Exchange.
Unique Aspects: The extensive Global Risk Exchange is a significant differentiator, offering a massive database of pre-completed assessments. Their AI-powered Evidence Evaluator and Assessment Autofill features aim to dramatically reduce manual effort for both assessing organizations and their vendors.
2. Prevalent Third-Party Risk Management Platform
Prevalent provides a unified platform for third-party risk management that integrates automated assessments, continuous monitoring, and evidence sharing. They emphasize a lifecycle approach to vendor risk, from sourcing to offboarding.
Details: Prevalent’s platform allows users to assess vendors against standardized (like SIG, H-ISAC, and their own Prevalent Compliance Framework) and custom questionnaires. It features vendor tiering, risk scoring flexibility, and built-in workflows to automate the assessment process. Prevalent also offers Vendor Intelligence Networks, which are repositories of completed and validated vendor questionnaires, aiming to reduce data collection time. Their solutions cover IT vendor risk, supplier risk (including ESG and ABAC), and various compliance frameworks. Prevalent offers a free Vendor Risk Assessment Template with 20 essential questions to help organizations get started.
Key Features: Standardized and custom questionnaires, automated assessment workflows, continuous threat monitoring, Vendor Intelligence Networks (Healthcare Vendor Network, Legal Vendor Network), risk scoring and reporting, remediation guidance.
Pricing: Specific pricing is not broadly published, but their “Procurement Jump Start” package for assessing up to 100 third parties is listed at $18,995. Generally, pricing is obtained via a sales quote.
Ideal User/Use Case: Organizations looking for a comprehensive TPRM solution that combines questionnaire-based assessments with continuous monitoring and access to shared assessment data, particularly those in healthcare or legal sectors who can benefit from specialized networks.
Unique Aspects: The combination of a unified platform with managed services and vendor intelligence networks. Their focus extends beyond cybersecurity to broader supplier risks like ESG and modern slavery.
3. Venminder
Venminder focuses on making third-party risk management more manageable by offering software combined with high-quality, expert-driven vendor risk assessments. They aim to help organizations through the entire vendor lifecycle.
Details: Venminder’s platform allows for the management of vendor questionnaires, and they emphasize the ability to customize risk assessments. Users can perform risk assessment questionnaires, and Venminder can evaluate the Q&A to assign a risk factor. Their services include expert reviews of critical vendor documentation, like SOC reports. The platform supports various stages of vendor management, including onboarding, contract management, due diligence, and risk assessments. Venminder also provides educational resources, including sample questionnaires and toolkits, such as one for integrating ESG into TPRM which includes a sample questionnaire. They also provide a community forum called Third Party ThinkTank for sharing knowledge and resources.
Key Features: Customizable automated questionnaires, expert-driven control assessments, vendor lifecycle management, centralized document repository, risk-based approach. Venminder distinguishes between a vendor questionnaire (a series of questions) and a vendor assessment (analyzing responses and calculating risk).
Pricing: Contact Venminder for pricing information.
Ideal User/Use Case: Organizations that want a combination of a software platform and expert assessment services, particularly those who value detailed reviews of vendor security and compliance. Suitable for businesses looking for a risk-based TPRM platform.
Unique Aspects: Strong emphasis on the quality of vendor assessments and evaluations, with certified experts performing reviews.
4. SecurityScorecard Platform
SecurityScorecard is known for its security ratings but also offers a comprehensive third-party risk management (TPRM) platform that includes security questionnaires. They aim to provide a 360-degree view of vendor risk.
Details: SecurityScorecard’s platform allows users to send, complete, and auto-validate questionnaires at scale. They offer customizable questionnaire templates and persona-based workflows to streamline the process for both risk managers and vendors. An interesting feature is the ability to leverage SecurityScorecard ratings to automatically provide insight into the validity of questionnaire responses. Their Atlas product is a questionnaire management and validation solution. The platform also focuses on continuous monitoring and provides actionable insights.
Key Features: Security ratings, customizable security questionnaires, automated vendor detection, workflow automation, AI-powered assistance to reduce manual effort in questionnaires, integration with security ratings to validate questionnaire responses.
Pricing: A free trial is available for their security ratings. For detailed platform pricing, inquiries need to be made to their sales team.
Ideal User/Use Case: Organizations that want to combine objective, data-driven security ratings with a robust questionnaire process to manage vendor risk. Especially useful for those looking to accelerate vendor due diligence with automated and intelligent questionnaires.
Unique Aspects: The tight integration of their security ratings with the questionnaire process, offering an “outside-in” and “inside-out” perspective on vendor risk. Their AI capabilities aim to significantly reduce the time spent on exchanging questionnaires.
5. Bitsight for Third-Party Risk Management
Bitsight is another leader in security ratings, offering solutions for managing third-party cyber risk that include vendor risk assessment questionnaires. They focus on providing objective, evidence-based data for risk decisions.
Details: Bitsight’s platform helps organizations identify potential vulnerabilities through risk assessment questionnaires completed by vendors. While questionnaires provide a point-in-time snapshot, Bitsight emphasizes supplementing this with continuous monitoring via their security ratings. Their Vendor Risk Management (VRM) solution allows users to map Bitsight’s risk vector data to standard assessment questionnaire formats for correlation and validation. They offer “Assessment Reporting” which helps to map assessment key criteria/questions with relevant risk data, with templates uploaded to the Bitsight platform. Users can also create custom questionnaires by filling out a template and submitting it to Bitsight Support. Bitsight offers a basic third-party risk assessment template and sample questions.
Key Features: Security ratings, vendor risk assessment questionnaires, continuous monitoring, mapping of security rating data to questionnaire responses, custom questionnaire creation support, reporting and analytics.
Pricing: Bitsight does not publicly list detailed pricing. They offer a “free demo.”
Ideal User/Use Case: Companies that prioritize data-driven, continuous monitoring alongside traditional questionnaire-based assessments. Useful for those wanting to validate questionnaire responses with objective security performance data.
Unique Aspects: Strong focus on daily security ratings based on externally verifiable data to complement subjective questionnaire responses. Their Assessment Reporting feature aims to improve efficiency by flagging questions needing attention based on risk data.
6. OneTrust Third-Party Risk Management
OneTrust provides a broad platform for trust intelligence, which includes a robust Third-Party Risk Management module designed to automate the vendor lifecycle and manage risks.
Details: OneTrust’s platform allows for the creation and management of vendor risk assessment questionnaires (VRAQs) and templates to streamline the assessment process. They offer dynamic questionnaires that can adapt to vendor-specific risks and AI auto-completion technology for faster questionnaire completion. The system supports intelligent onboarding workflows and integration with other OneTrust solutions and third-party data sources. Users can create a question library and manage automation rules for third-party risk.
Key Features: Dynamic and customizable questionnaires, automated workflows, AI-assisted questionnaire completion, risk scoring, centralized vendor inventory, integration capabilities, and a vendor portal. They provide tools to manage the entire vendor lifecycle from intake assessment to risk reporting.
Pricing: Small business pricing is mentioned at $600 per month by one source, but generally, OneTrust encourages contacting them for detailed pricing based on needs.
Ideal User/Use Case: Organizations, including SMBs, looking for a highly configurable and automated platform to manage the full lifecycle of third-party risk, with a strong emphasis on questionnaire management and workflow automation.
Unique Aspects: Part of a broader “Trust Intelligence Platform,” allowing for integration with other privacy, GRC, and ethics solutions. Their AI-driven insights and configurable “if/then” logic for workflows offer flexibility.
7. Archer Third Party Risk Management
Archer offers a comprehensive suite of Integrated Risk Management (IRM) solutions, with Third Party Risk Management being a key component. Their platform is designed to provide a holistic view of risk.
Details: Archer Third Party Risk Management uses a series of risk assessment questionnaires to evaluate third parties’ internal controls and collect supporting documentation. The platform supports industry-standard questionnaires like the Shared Assessments SIG (Full, Core, and Lite versions), which can be purchased through Archer. It features a Vendor Portal for third parties to respond to questionnaires. Risk assessment findings are automatically generated and can be managed through an issues management workflow. Questionnaires in Archer are structurally similar to applications and can target specific entities like vendors, with system-generated fields for progress, status, and scoring.
Key Features: Support for standardized (e.g., SIG) and custom questionnaires, automated workflows for risk assessment, inherent and residual risk calculations, issues management, Vendor Portal, configurable platform. Archer enables the creation of a question library and rules to display relevant questions based on target properties.
Pricing: Archer does not publicly disclose detailed pricing for its main platform. Pricing information for select Archer Exchange offerings is available to logged-in clients.
Ideal User/Use Case: Organizations, often larger enterprises, looking for a highly configurable and integrated risk management platform to manage multiple dimensions of risk, including comprehensive third-party governance with robust questionnaire capabilities.
Unique Aspects: Deep integration with a broader GRC/IRM platform, allowing for a holistic approach to risk. Strong support for industry-standard questionnaires like SIG through their partnership with Shared Assessments.
Choosing the right platform for managing vendor risk assessment questionnaires depends on your organization’s specific needs, size, industry, and the complexity of your vendor ecosystem. Many of these platforms offer demos, which can be invaluable in making an informed decision.
Navigating the landscape of vendor risk assessment is crucial, and the platforms above offer excellent solutions for evaluating your third-party ecosystem. However, if your organization also frequently finds itself on the receiving end of security and compliance questionnaires, streamlining your response process is equally vital. To discover how you can significantly reduce the time spent on these assessments, accelerate sales cycles, and proactively build trust with your partners, explore how Targhee Security uses AI-powered automation and a secure Trust Center.
