Security surveys are not just a hassle — they are a recurring challenge for security and sales departments.
They consume time in organizations, occupying the schedules of professionals with dull, automatable tasks. But is there a way to diminish or completely eradicate security surveys altogether? The main issue isn’t the lack of excellent survey tools — it’s the surveys themselves.
At SafeBase, we don’t merely discuss transparency — it’s fundamental to our operations, from how we design our products to how we communicate about them. To emphasize transparency, in this article, we will delve into our Trust Center platform extensively:
- Why we believe in Center of Trust over security surveys
- How a Center of Trust minimizes and eradicates surveys
- How to exhibit the return on investment of a Center of Trust
Let’s explore further.
How a focus on a center of trust initially helps
Addressing the survey issue goes beyond the survey through a Center of Trust.
Center of Trusts are established to substitute surveys. While Center of Trusts may collaborate with and support survey functionalities — like ours at SafeBase — the primary goal of a Center of Trust is to provide a lasting solution for security surveys.
The resources and financial expenses allocated solely to security surveys can be as high as that of a full-time employee (and often more). For any enterprise or expanding organization, security evaluations are a substantial cost and extend deal closure times for businesses.
Many organizations believe that simplifying surveys is the solution to all the redundancy and investment in them. What does this signify? Implementing workarounds to ease slightly less painful surveys which, despite AI assistance, bring a myriad of challenges:
- Requirement for human supervision
- Hard to expand and costly to delegate
- Lack of reliance on AI solutions with sensitive data
Center of Trusts propose an alternative to the security survey process, i.e., tackling the real issue. While it is vital to have capabilities to manage security surveys as a “last-mile” support alternative. However, long-term reduction of the problem commences with an all-inclusive Center of Trust platform.
How SafeBase alleviates the burden of security surveys
Reduce friction. If we were to characterize how centers of trust (created by SafeBase) alleviate the strain of security surveys in two terms, these would be them. Luckily, we have more than two terms.
SafeBase streamlines traditionally repetitive actions in the security evaluation process — document requisitions, access and authorization of communication sharing, questionnaire responses — by simplifying or automating them. No more unnecessary exchanges. No more redundancy. No more compromising security integrity under a veil of ambiguity.
So, how do we achieve this in our platform?
1. Go beyond surveys with Centers of Trust
Surveys receive makeshift fixes. Organizations have typically sought remedies for the symptoms: “How can we make surveys more manageable/less intrusive/less dreadful?” This conventional approach may alleviate some short-term issues — time spent per survey, administration, etc. — but neglects to address the question, “Why are we compelled to do this in the first place?”
Instead of accepting security surveys as a necessary nuisance, SafeBase aims to make them a thing of the past. Our priority on Centers of Trust reduces incoming surveys by 74% or more. Some clients, like Crossbeam, observe up to a 98% reduction.
Trust centers serve as a dependable source for both sales and security teams, as well as external customers and partners. By transitioning the security evaluation process from request-based to self-service-based, Trust Centers aid buyers in comprehending an organization’s security stance and enable swift yet protected information sharing.
The ideal trust center removes uncertainties in security evaluations while offering the flexibility necessary to appropriately govern access to security information/documentation. Features to look for include:
- Automated NDA signing
- Magic links for access without credentials/passwords
- Automated access procedures like auto and mass invites, and expiry dates with instant alerts
- Permission profiles for meticulous governance
- Automated document watermarking
- Change logs for visibility (and audit periods!)
- Support for SCIM and SAML protocols
Organizations that fail to address the root of the security survey issue will continue to engage in a short-term, extremely reactive, laborious game. Trust Centers mark a step towards transformation, envisioning a streamlined security evaluation process.
2. Automate the surveys through AI
Once again, transparency forms the foundation of our operations. While we (clearly) advocate for trust centers as essential components for any security-conscious organization, we realize the shift from surveys will take time. With a track record of assisting over 700 clients in doing so already, we acknowledge that surveys will remain a nuisance for a little longer — organizations need solutions for both near-term and long-term issues.
While our Trust Center significantly decreases the necessity for inbound surveys, SafeBase provides AI Questionnaire Support to alleviate the burden for organizations dealing with remaining questionnaires. AI streamlines the tedious exchange of surveys, utilizing security-trained LLMs and SLMs to deliver high-confidence responses to security domain queries, without extensive human intervention.
Using AI Questionnaire Support is effortless for all teams, easing the workload for solutions engineers and security teams usually responsible for answering surveys. Whether it be consolidated survey tables, confidence evaluations, automatic approvals, or quick Knowledge Base additions — SafeBase caters to organizations. This adjacent capability to the Trust Center may not eliminate surveys entirely, but it certainly alleviates the associated pressure.
3. Respond to TPRM questionnaires with our Chrome extension
If an organization needs to engage with buyers on their TPRM portal, SafeBase enhances survey capabilities with our Chrome extension. Organizations can reply to security survey questions directly on the portal, eliminating the need for additional communication when replying to TPRM questionnaires.
SafeBase offers support for various TPRM portals, such as:
- Coupa
- Formstack
- Google Forms
- Microsoft Forms
- OneTrust
- Panorays
- ProcessUnity
- ServiceNow
- Upguard
- Whistic
- ZenGRC
- ZipHQ
Enhance the ROI of Trust Centers
How can organizations ensure a Trust Center is not just another security expense? We are pragmatic — we (and our 700+ clients) can extol the virtues of our platform all day. However, if quantifying the impact on business ROI is challenging, justifying the investment becomes difficult.
This is where SafeBase’s platform-driven analytics come in handy.
Analytics by SafeBase
SafeBase’s analytics feature evaluates the various ways a Trust Center can influence an organization’s security, trust, and expansion. Both the Trust Center and AI Questionnaire Support offer a plethora of data to provide insights into your security initiatives and buyer behavior.
Insights on Buyers
Identify focus areas by comprehending how and where buyers engage with the Trust Center. Organizations can analyze engagement metrics like views, access requests, account activity, and document interactions — or delve into more detailed statistics such as approved/denied/pending requests, access approval rates, and time taken for approval.
Security Return on Investment
Showcase the impact of security and trust initiatives by linking Trust Center engagement to revenue generated through security measures. SafeBase’s dashboards demonstrate the ROI of security investments (via the Trust Center), enabling teams to link efforts to Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR), pipeline growth, and deal acceleration in collaboration with sales.
Priority Setting
Our platform assists in estimating the expected effort versus impact on the questionnaire front. The Revenue and Deals dashboards in Analytics highlight won deals and ongoing opportunities, illustrating how security has influenced deals and identifying areas where collaboration with sales can drive results. This approach ensures focusing on achieving the most robust business outcomes first.
Trust Centers > Security Surveys
Security-focused organizations are grappling with a burgeoning issue: how to handle security surveys? Addressing the security survey process improvement is crucial to meet the immediate requirements of your organization, while the benefits of investing in a Trust Center are evident:
- Reduced surveys with a comprehensive platform
- Simplified surveys (for the remaining ones)
- Speedier, more dependable security communication
While we advocate for a future devoid of security surveys, we understand the current needs of security-conscious organizations. Our Trust Center platform enhances the security assessment process, whether it resolves present requirements (security surveys) or future needs (establishing proactive security strategies).
Organizations can finally move past an antiquated, temporary solution for security and trust communication by diminishing the prevalence, delay, and reliance on security surveys with SafeBase’s Trust Center platform.
About Author
