Originally published on the Bug Circuit blog.
A client's procurement or legal team just sent you a spreadsheet with 40 questions about penetration tests, vulnerability management, and encryption standards, and you're a two-person shop with no security team. Here's the short version.
You don't need SOC 2 or an in-house security team to pass a vendor questionnaire — you need honest, specific answers backed by real evidence, and a recent third-party security assessment is the single most useful piece of evidence you can attach.
The rest of this guide walks through the questions you'll actually see, explains what each one is really trying to find out, and gives you wording you can copy and adapt without lying or stalling the deal.
Why they're asking at all
