What is Consensus Assessments Initiative Questionnaire (CAIQ)? 

In June of 2023, the automaker Toyota revealed that around 260,000 customers’ data was exposed online due to a misconfiguration in its cloud setup. Though the breach didn’t expose a huge amount of sensitive data, it shows how a simple mistake can give hackers an opening.

This is why a Consensus Assessments Initiative Questionnaire (CAIQ) is vital. If Toyota had done its research and shared a CAIQ with the cloud provider, it might have identified the misconfiguration and prevented the breach.

So, what’s CAIQ? A CAIQ is a questionnaire that documents security controls across IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS services, affording the organization transparency into security measures.

In this article, we cover an overview of CAIQs, who created it, and other similar questionnaires you can rely on.

What is CAIQ?

CAIQ, or the Consensus Assessments Initiative Questionnaire, is a tool developed by the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) for companies to evaluate the security capabilities of a cloud service provider.

Essentially, it’s a questionnaire that lists various security controls that help assess the security measures implemented by the cloud service provider.

Who created CAIQ?

The CSA is the organization dedicated to defining and raising awareness of best practices to help ensure a secure cloud computing environment. It is credited with the creation of the CAIQ.

Why is CAIQ helpful for organizations?

CAIQ is helpful for a company because it poses a set of questions that need to be answered and sent to authorities so that you can keep your security controls and processes in check. 

The CAIQ helps you follow de facto cloud security assurance and compliance standards. The questionnaire fits with the CSA’s Cloud Controls Matrix (CCM), a framework for cybersecurity controls in cloud computing. 

This is notable because the CCM includes 197 control objectives across 16 domains. These controls cover all significant aspects of cloud technology. 

Moreover, these 197 CCM controls match CSA’s Security Guidance for Cloud Computing, which is widely seen as the standard for cloud security assurance and compliance. 

Also, apart from the normal CAIQ questionnaire there is a lite version as well.

CAIQ Lite is a simpler version of the CAIQ. It’s made to evaluate the security stance of cloud service providers. With about 71 questions, this condensed version covers all 16 control domains of the CSA’s Cloud Controls Matrix (CCM). It’s a convenient choice for quick interactions between cloud customers and providers.

What is the difference between CCM and CAIQ?

CCM and CAIQ are tools developed by the CSA to help organizations assess and manage cloud security risks. However, they serve slightly different purposes and have different formats.

CCM:

• Purpose: It provides a set of controls for cloud computing environments. These controls are organized into domains such as governance, risk management, and operations.
• Content: CCM offers detailed controls aligned with various compliance frameworks, regulations, and industry standards. It helps organizations understand cloud-specific risks and implement appropriate security measures.
• Usage: You can use CCM to evaluate cloud service providers’ (CSPs) security posture or to guide their own cloud security strategy.

CAIQ:

• Purpose: It is a standardized set of questions that organizations can use to assess the security capabilities of CSP
• Content: CAIQ contains a list of questions based on the controls defined in the CCM. It covers various aspects of cloud security, such as data protection, access control, and incident response
• Usage: You can send the CAIQ to CSP to gather information about their security practices and capabilities. This helps make informed decisions about selecting or evaluating CSPs based on their security posture.

Examples of CAIQ questions

The questions covered in a CAIQ are designed to assess the security capabilities of a cloud service provider and help organizations evaluate the risks associated with using cloud services. Here are some examples of CAIQ questions just to give you an idea:

CAIQ vs other vendor risk assessment questionnaires

The CAIQ provides your cloud company with an industry-accepted way to manage and document the kind of security controls you handle in your services. Although it provides transparency and assurance, to some extent, other questionnaires may also be beneficial. 

Now, let’s take a look at the other assessment questionnaires vs CAIQ:

CAIQ vs. other questionnaires

CAIQ is recommended for evaluating cloud providers during vendor risk assessments. It includes nearly 261 questions covering cloud operations and processes across IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS. Now, let’s see how other questionnaires fare against CAIQ.

SIG (Standardized Information Gathering)

In contrast to the CAIQ, the Standardized Information Gathering (SIG) and SIG Lite questionnaires are suggested for evaluating vendors with lower inherent risk. SIG Lite condenses the high-level concepts and questions from larger SIG assessments into just under 200 questions.

HECVAT (Higher Education Cloud Vendor Assessment Toolkit)

The Higher Education Cloud Vendor Assessment Toolkit, or HECVAT, is a questionnaire framework built in Excel specifically tailored to assess the distinct security risks encountered by higher education institutions. Despite its focus on the education sector, many of the questions included are applicable across various industries and sectors.

VSA (Vendor Security Alliance)

The VSA provides two free questionnaires that are updated annually—the VSA-Full. This traditional VSA questionnaire delves deeply into vendor security and is widely used by thousands of companies worldwide. The VSA-Core includes the most essential vendor assessment questions and privacy considerations.

How can Sprinto help your cloud environment?

Sprinto can save your organization time by automating vendor questionnaires and offering highly customizable templates. 

This means you can quickly assess risk and compliance related to third-party information security controls without spending as much time aligning with the CSA Star program. It offers a questionnaire as a best practice for evaluating cloud environments.

Moreover, if you’re already compliant with SOC 2 or ISO 27001, you’ve already met 75-80% of the CSA STAR requirements. Want to learn more? Get in touch with us!

FAQs

CAIQ-Q vs. CAIQ-Lite: what is the difference?

CAIQ-Lite is tailored to a shorter and simpler version of CAIQ, which can be used by cloud users to facilitate their more successful interaction with the service provider. On the other hand, the CAIQ toolkit only has 124 questions compared to the CAIQ-Lite, which comprises 261. However, CAIQ-Lite provides the range of the risk control domains found in CCM.

What is covered by CAIQ?

CAIQ does threat assessment for cloud providers and aspires to set up an industry-wide reporting catalog. It creates a mechanism to help your company evaluate and understand cloud providers’ security levels before engaging with them in any business affairs.

What’s the latest format of CAIQ?

The latest version is STAR Level 1: Compliance Against Intrusion Questions (CAIQ v4), which must be answered by each individual registered with the STAR. It covers all the compulsory features of CAIQ 4.

How many questions will there be for CAIQ v4?

v4.0.2 of CAIQ consists of 261 questions. These questions are classified under the 17 compliance domains and control specifications of the CCM and enable companies to do and submit self-evaluations to the STAR Registry of CSA by CSA.