Procurement Security Questionnaires: The 40 Questions Enterprise Buyers Will Ask
Tuli Faas March 26, 2026
If you sell software with AI in it to anyone larger than 200 staff, the security questionnaire is the gate. Get it wrong and you stall in legal for months; get it right once and the next ten deals run on the same answers.
The six categories
Information security (ISO 27001, SOC 2, encryption, access).
Data handling (residency, retention, sub-processors, GDPR Article 28 terms).
AI governance (training data provenance, human oversight, bias testing).
Model lifecycle (versioning, rollback, monitoring, incident response).
Privacy and DPIA (lawful basis, DSAR handling, opt-outs).
Business continuity and supplier risk.
“The vendors who win enterprise deals in 2026 will be the ones who answer the AI questions before they are asked.”
— Sarah Bird, Chief Product Officer, Responsible AI, Microsoft
Build a Trust Centre, not a PDF
Publish a single page covering certifications, sub-processors, data flows, and your AI governance summary. Refresh quarterly. Procurement teams routinely cite this page back to you in negotiations — it shortcuts the legal review by weeks.
Map your security answers to ISO 27001 and 42001 in Startup Grower.
