The VSAQ Explained: Google's Open-Source Vendor Security Assessment

You've completed two SIG questionnaires. Things are going smoothly. Then a prospect sends you a VSAQ—and it's immediately different.

The format is different. The logic is different. Some questions are conditional based on your previous answers. It feels more sophisticated, more technical.

VSAQ stands for Vendor Security Assessment Questionnaire, and it's one of the fastest-growing assessment frameworks in enterprise security. Originally created by Google and open-sourced, VSAQ is gaining traction among larger technology companies, cloud-native organizations, and security-forward enterprises.

The Origin Story

Google created VSAQ as an internal tool for vetting vendors and third-party partners. Instead of sending dozens of different custom questionnaires to different vendors, Google wanted a standardized assessment that covered the vendor scenarios they cared about.

After using it internally for years, Google open-sourced VSAQ in 2015. The idea was simple: the industry could benefit from a vendor assessment framework that was modern, flexible, and didn't require proprietary software to use or deploy.

The framework caught on quickly, particularly among tech companies, cloud providers, and organizations with sophisticated security programs. Today, you'll see VSAQ from Google, major cloud providers, fintech companies, and enterprises with large security teams.

What Makes VSAQ Different: Branching Logic

The most distinctive feature of VSAQ is its use of branching questions. Unlike traditional questionnaires where every respondent answers every question, VSAQ uses conditional logic to customize the assessment based on your answers.

Here's how it works in practice: A question early in the assessment asks "Do you process personally identifiable information (PII)?" If you answer "No," entire sections of questions about data protection, privacy controls, and retention policies simply don't appear. You skip them entirely.

Similarly, if you answer "We use a third-party email provider" to a question about email security, you get a follow-up set of questions about how you vet and monitor that third party. If you answer "We manage email security in-house," you get a different set of technical questions about your email infrastructure.

This branching logic has a big practical benefit: assessments are shorter for vendors who operate in simpler environments. A SaaS company that doesn't handle payment data, doesn't process health information, and doesn't store data on user devices gets a more targeted assessment than a company operating across all those domains.

But it also requires more sophisticated tooling to administer and more careful thinking when answering—because your answer to one question determines which questions appear next.

Who Uses VSAQ and When

VSAQ is particularly popular among:

• Cloud providers: AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure vendors often use VSAQ for supply chain security assessment
• Tech companies: Companies like Stripe, Okta, and other Silicon Valley-based vendors are quick adopters
• Financial services: Forward-thinking fintech companies and some larger financial institutions use VSAQ
• Startups and growth-stage companies: VSAQ's flexibility and lower administrative overhead appeal to leaner security teams
• International companies: VSAQ includes better support for non-US regulatory frameworks like GDPR

You're less likely to see VSAQ from traditional enterprise companies, large governments, or highly regulated industries (banking, insurance, healthcare) that have standardized on SIG questionnaires. But the trend is toward VSAQ adoption—it's gaining market share every year.

The Format and Structure

VSAQ assessments typically come in digital format—either as a web application, JSON file, or specialized questionnaire tool. You'll rarely see a PDF. This is intentional: the branching logic requires interactive tooling.

The assessment covers similar domains to SIG: data protection, access control, incident response, business continuity, vulnerability management, and so on. But VSAQ questions tend to be more technical and assume a higher baseline of security maturity.

For example, where SIG might ask "Do you encrypt data at rest?" VSAQ might ask "What encryption standards do you use (AES-256, ChaCha20, other)?" and "How do you manage encryption keys?"—showing that it expects vendors to have already implemented encryption and just wants to understand the sophistication level.

How to Approach VSAQ Programmatically

The good news: if you've built a knowledge base for SIG questionnaires, much of that work transfers to VSAQ. The domains are similar; the questions just go deeper.

The challenge with VSAQ is the branching logic. You can't pre-answer all questions because not all questions will appear. Your assessment is customized based on your company's actual practices and scope.

Here's the best approach:

First time through: Complete the assessment manually so you understand which branches apply to your company. This "learns" your company's profile: Do you process PII? Do you use subprocessors? Do you store data internationally? Your answers determine which questions are in scope.

Document your profile: After completing once, document your company's answers to the "gating" questions—the ones that determine which branches apply. This becomes your reference point.

Build a branch-aware knowledge base: When you build your Q&A documentation, organize it by branch. Document answers to "questions for vendors who process PII" separately from "questions for vendors who don't." This way, when you get another VSAQ from a different company, you can quickly route to the right answers.

The AI Advantage for VSAQ

This is where AI-assisted questionnaire tools really shine. Because VSAQ is interactive and conditional, an AI system that understands the branching logic can guide you through the assessment much more efficiently than manual completion.

An AI tool can understand that you process PII, automatically route you to the right branch, and suggest answers from your knowledge base that are relevant to that specific branch. It can flag when your answer to question 12 creates a branch conflict with your answer to question 7. It can estimate completion time based on your company's actual scope.

This is harder than traditional questionnaire assistance, but vendors who have implemented it report 60-70% time savings on VSAQ completion—a significant improvement over manual assessment.

Staying Ready for VSAQ

As VSAQ adoption grows, expect to see it more frequently, especially if you're selling to tech-forward companies or financial services firms. The good news: you don't need separate preparation. Build your knowledge base for SIG, understand your company's security posture clearly, and document the "gating" questions specific to VSAQ.

When a VSAQ arrives, you'll already have 70-80% of your answers written. You'll just need to route them to the right branches and add depth to the more technical questions specific to VSAQ.