CAIQ vs. SIG: Top Questionnaires for Vendor Risk Assessment

Risk assessments, security questionnaires, vendor due diligence, and RFPs are strategic initiatives for organizations managing risk across growing and interconnected supply chains. How is one questionnaire different from another, and how do you decide which ones to use? Today we compare CAIQ vs SIG, or SIG vs CAIQ if you like.

What is the CAIQ questionnaire?

CAIQ (Consensus Assessments Initiative Questionnaire) is a questionnaire that provides a set of Yes/No questions for cloud service providers, to determine if their cloud practices are reliably secure. Cloud service providers include Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS) offerings.

The CAIQ contains 261 questions. It was developed by the Cloud Security Alliance, a not-for-profit organization that promotes the use of best practices for providing security assurance within cloud computing. 

CAIQ provides an industry-accepted way to document what information security controls exist in cloud services, increasing security control transparency and assurance. It helps cloud customers to gauge the security posture of prospective cloud service vendors, as well as easily monitor their ongoing compliance with security standards.

Its latest versions have been combined with the Cloud Controls Matrix (CCM), comprising a cybersecurity control framework for cloud computing. The Matrix is composed of 197 control objectives that are structured in 17 domains covering all key aspects of cloud technology. This makes it a de-facto standard for cloud security assurance and compliance.

CAIQ-Lite is a shorter and condensed version of CAIQ that allows cloud customers to more easily engage with their service providers, with only 71 questions still addressing all 16 of the CCM’s control domains. This is a great option for a fast-paced cloud provider environment that isn’t suited to a more thorough questionnaire like the CAIQ.

What is the CAIQ Lite questionnaire?

CAIQ Lite is a simplified version of the Consensus Assessments Initiative Questionnaire (CAIQ), which is designed to assess the security posture of cloud service providers.

This streamlined version contains 71 questions and covers all 16 control domains of the Cloud Controls Matrix (CCM), offering a practical option for rapid engagement between cloud customers and providers.

The primary purpose of a "lite" version of the CAIQ is to facilitate a quicker assessment process while still providing a comprehensive overview of a cloud provider's security controls. It is particularly useful for organizations that require a less extensive questionnaire due to time constraints or when dealing with vendors that pose a lower inherent risk.

CAIQ Lite is not merely a truncated version of its more detailed counterpart, though — it is a strategic tool designed for agility, efficiency, and continuous security assurance in the cloud computing sphere. It ensures that rigorous security evaluation remains a steadfast part of the vendor selection and monitoring processes without becoming a bottleneck to the fast-paced, innovation-driven market that is the cloud industry.

When to use CAIQ Lite

• Fast-paced environments: In the rapidly evolving cloud provider landscape, time is a precious commodity. Enterprises that are looking to adopt cloud solutions do not always have the luxury to delve deep into extensive questionnaires. CAIQ Lite emerges as the tool of choice for such scenarios, offering a succinct yet comprehensive assessment of a cloud service provider’s security measures. This allows for swift demonstrations of security postures, aligning with the agile business processes that require quick but informed decision-making.
• Initial screenings: The process of vendor selection is often layered with multiple stages of scrutiny. CAIQ Lite serves as an ideal instrument for the initial stages of this process, enabling organizations to perform a high-level evaluation of the security protocols of potential cloud service providers. It acts as a sieve, helping to filter through the multitude of options and focus on those that meet the baseline security requirements, thereby efficiently narrowing down the field to the most promising candidates.
• Ongoing monitoring: The security landscape is not static, and nor are the practices of cloud service providers. CAIQ Lite is an excellent tool for periodic reassessments that ensure vendors continue to adhere to agreed-upon security standards. Its concise nature makes it less burdensome for vendors to comply with regular checks, fostering a culture of continuous oversight and dynamic compliance within the cloud security domain.

Advantages over the full CAIQ

The streamlined set of 71 questions in CAIQ Lite drastically reduces the time and effort required from both the cloud service providers and the assessing organizations. By focusing on the essential security controls, it mitigates the exhaustive process traditionally associated with comprehensive security assessments, thus enabling a more rapid progression from assessment to action.

CAIQ Lite distills the essence of cloud security into a concise questionnaire without sacrificing the depth of scrutiny. This targeted approach ensures that the core elements of cloud security are thoroughly evaluated, facilitating a focused review process that can be conducted with greater frequency and with less effort.

The reduced complexity and brevity of CAIQ Lite make it more approachable and less intimidating for cloud service providers, especially those that may not have the resources to engage with the full CAIQ. It democratizes the assessment process, ensuring that even smaller providers can participate and demonstrate their commitment to security, ultimately expanding the options available to organizations seeking secure cloud services.

What is the SIG questionnaire (SIG Core)?

The Standardized Information Gathering (SIG) Questionnaire, often referred to as SIG Core, is a comprehensive, industry-standard framework for assessing third-party cybersecurity, IT, privacy, and operational risk. Developed by Shared Assessments, the SIG helps organizations evaluate how vendors manage security risk across 18 domains — from access control and incident response to business continuity and data protection.

With more than 1,200 detailed questions, SIG Core provides deep insight into a vendor’s security and compliance posture. It aligns with major regulatory and security frameworks, including NIST, ISO 27001, FFIEC, HIPAA, GDPR, and PCI, allowing organizations to assess vendors against globally recognized standards without building proprietary questionnaires from scratch.

SIG Core is designed for:

• High-risk or critical vendors handling sensitive data or supporting essential business functions that requires deep due diligence.
• Organizations in regulated industries that require alignment with multiple frameworks and compliance mandates such as NIST, ISO, SOC 2, or DORA
• Security and compliance teams seeking consistency and scalability across vendor assessments.
• Companies that require evidence-backed assurance that third parties meet rigorous governance and security expectations.

Unlike lighter assessments such as SIG Lite, which offers a condensed view of vendor controls, SIG Core dives deeper into every risk domain to validate not just what controls exist—but how effectively they are implemented and maintained.

When paired with Bitsight Vendor Risk Management, the SIG Core process becomes faster, smarter, and more defensible.

Bitsight automates the distribution, collection, and analysis of SIG questionnaires—enhanced by Bitsight AI and Framework Intelligence, which automatically parses and maps vendor responses, SOC 2 reports, and control evidence to SIG Core requirements.

This allows teams to:

• Eliminate manual review and data entry.
• Identify control gaps with real-time insights.
• Validate vendor responses with Bitsight’s objective cyber risk data.
• Maintain continuous monitoring to ensure vendors uphold their stated security posture over time.

What is the SIG Lite Questionnaire?

SIG Lite is the streamlined version of the Standardized Information Gathering (SIG) questionnaire, developed by Shared Assessments to simplify vendor due diligence. While the full SIG Core provides more than 1,200 detailed questions across 18 risk domains, SIG Lite condenses that library to under 200 questions—making it a fast and efficient tool for evaluating vendors with lower inherent risk or during early-stage onboarding.

Unlike many proprietary assessments, the SIG Lite questionnaire aligns with widely recognized frameworks such as NIST, ISO 27001, FFIEC, HIPAA, and PCI, giving organizations a standardized way to evaluate vendor security controls without building new questionnaires from scratch. It covers key areas like access control, data protection, incident response, and business continuity, while maintaining alignment with regulatory standards.

SIG Lite is especially useful for:

• Initial vendor screenings where rapid risk visibility is needed.
• Continuous monitoring workflows that assess smaller or lower-tier vendors.
• Organizations scaling third-party programs that require speed, consistency, and repeatability.

When paired with Bitsight Vendor Risk Management, SIG Lite questionnaires can be automatically distributed, tracked, and analyzed, saving security and compliance teams significant time. Bitsight AI helps parse and summarize vendor responses, highlight control gaps, and validate claims with objective performance data—turning questionnaire responses into actionable insights.

Why use CAIQ for vendor assessments vs. other questionnaires?

Using CAIQ is advised when evaluating cloud providers during the vendor risk assessment process, as it contains just under 300 questions about cloud operations and processes (IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS).

Why use SIG for vendor assessments vs. other questionnaires?

Using SIG, especially SIG Lite, is advised when evaluating vendors who have less inherent risk. It takes the high-level concepts and questions from the larger SIG assessments, distilling them down to just under 200 questions. The SIG Core library is useful for more extensive assessments.

CAIQ vs. SIG: How to apply these questionnaires in practice

Organizations often use a tiered approach, selecting the right questionnaire based on vendor criticality and risk exposure:

• CAIQ / CAIQ Lite: For evaluating cloud service providers, with CAIQ for comprehensive assurance and CAIQ Lite for faster engagements.
• SIG Core / SIG Lite: For assessing non-cloud third parties, with SIG Lite supporting scalable screening and SIG Core providing in-depth due diligence.

By combining these frameworks, security and risk teams can create a balanced vendor risk assessment strategy—ensuring efficiency for low-risk vendors and rigor for critical partners.

When integrated into Bitsight Vendor Risk Management, all four questionnaires can be automated, validated with objective Bitsight risk data, and continuously monitored, turning manual assessments into an intelligent, ongoing process for third-party cyber risk management.

How Bitsight makes it easy to complete CAIQ and SIG questionnaires

Deciding which is the right assessment tool will depend on your organization’s vendor risk management program needs. Security questionnaires like SIG, CAIQ, CIS Controls, VSAQ, and NIST are continually updated and improved by groups of experts in cybersecurity, risk management, and compliance, reflecting new security and privacy challenges.

Bitsight Vendor Risk Management automates and streamlines vendor risk assessments, licensing the latest CAIQ and SIG versions as well as many other industry questionnaires, and makes them available to organizations and their third-party vendors. With Bitsight VRM your team can save countless hours developing a custom questionnaire based on the already-available SIG and CAIQ questionnaires to assess your vendors, or build one from scratch.

The tool helps you send questionnaires to vendors, improves your review process, and saves completed questionnaires to ensure they are always accessible.

Whether sending an assessment request to third-party vendors or responding to CAIQ and SIG as a vendor yourself, Bitsight allows your team to be proactive about security and risk mitigation.