Security Questionnaires: Answering Customer Security Reviews Without a Security Team

A practitioner field guide to answering customer security questionnaires when you do not have a dedicated security team. Covers why questionnaires exist and who sends them, triage and scoping, the standard frameworks (SIG, CAIQ, VSA, and custom), reading what reviewers are really asking, building a reusable answer library, evidence and proof, answering honestly when the answer is no, the policies worth writing, when certifications such as SOC 2 and ISO 27001 are worth pursuing, coordinating answers across a small team, deadlines and negotiation, recognising overreach, publishing a trust page, and turning a reactive scramble into a maintained, scalable practice.