The Hidden Costs of Manual Security Reviews for GRC Teams

For GRC teams, security questionnaires have become a necessary, but dreaded, part of the job. If you’re a GRC leader, chances are you’re all too familiar with the avalanche of security reviews coming in faster than your team can complete them — especially at end of quarter or end of year. 

You know the drill:

• Intake comes through sales or an RFP portal.
• A team member manually sifts through a massive knowledge base to copy and paste answers — often 300+ per questionnaire.
• Coordination begins: legal, product, security, sales—everyone weighs in.
• The completed questionnaire is sent off.
• Then come the follow-ups…

And it’s not just a process problem. Manual security reviews come at a steep cost to your team, your deals, and your business. Below, we’re breaking down eight hidden costs of handling security questionnaires manually, and why GRC teams need — and deserve — a better way.

8 Hidden Costs of Manual Security Reviews

1. Time That Should Be Strategic 

Security reviews consume far more time than most teams anticipate. One questionnaire can take 8–12 hours of focused effort across multiple contributors. Multiply that by 50, 100, or 200 reviews per year, and you’ve got a full-time job — or more — just responding to questionnaires.

For lean GRC teams, this work comes at the expense of critical program-building initiatives. Instead of maturing your control environment or preparing for the next audit, your team is stuck formatting rows in Excel and revalidating answers.

Manual reviews lock GRC in reactive mode, leaving little time for proactive risk mitigation or strategic planning.

2. Burnout and Low Morale

GRC teams are made up of highly skilled, technical professionals. They didn’t sign up to do hours of rote data entry each week.

When questionnaires pile up — especially at the end of a sales quarter — it’s common for GRC teams to work nights and weekends to meet deadlines. What starts as occasional overtime quickly becomes an expectation, contributing to burnout, turnover, and a disengaged team.

This isn't just a morale issue; it's a performance issue. Exhausted teams make mistakes, miss opportunities, and ultimately struggle to deliver real risk insights.

3. Sales Bottlenecks and Missed Revenue

GRC teams often become the critical path to closing high-value deals — but they rarely have the resources to keep pace with demand.

Enterprise buyers require security reviews as part of vendor due diligence. If your review takes too long, customers may walk — or move forward with a competitor who responds faster. Even small delays can slow down revenue recognition or drag deals into the next quarter.

When questionnaires are handled manually, timelines are unpredictable. Reviews that should take two days stretch into two weeks. Sales teams follow up. Frustration grows.

4. Eroded Customer Trust

Customers don’t just evaluate your product — they evaluate how well you manage and communicate your security posture. If they see inconsistent answers, slow responses, or last-minute fire drills, it raises red flags.

Even if your security program is rock-solid, a clunky review process can undermine that perception.

This is especially true for large enterprise buyers, where every touchpoint is scrutinized by legal, security, and procurement teams. Your security questionnaire may be the most detailed glimpse they get into your operations. It needs to be right.

5. Knowledge Fragmentation and Risk of Inaccurate Responses

Manual processes usually rely on a patchwork of outdated documents, internal knowledge, and shared drives. And when each questionnaire is answered in isolation, it’s easy to introduce errors or inconsistencies.

A single outdated statement about encryption practices or data retention can become a liability — especially if it contradicts your public security documentation or certification attestations.

Without centralized version control, answers get stale fast. You end up wasting even more time fact-checking yourself, or worse — sharing incorrect info that could cause compliance issues down the line.

6. Cross-Functional Time Sink

Security questionnaires don’t just drain GRC bandwidth — they consume hours from teams across the business. It’s not uncommon for security engineers, legal counsel, product managers, and account executives to be looped into every review.

That’s time those teams aren’t spending shipping features, managing risk, or closing deals.

And when there’s no system in place for streamlined collaboration, things fall through the cracks: duplicate work, missed approvals, long email threads with no clear owner.

In many organizations, security reviews are a silent cost center — one that impacts every department but belongs to no one.

7. Limited Visibility and Reporting

Manual workflows rarely provide insight into how security reviews are actually performing.

• How many reviews are we doing each month?
• How long does it take to complete one, on average?
• Which questions are we answering repeatedly?
• Where are we getting stuck?

Without these metrics, it’s hard for GRC leaders to make the case for additional headcount, tooling, or process improvements. And when executive teams ask how security is enabling sales, GRC often has no hard data to show for their effort.

8. Compliance Drift

The more decentralized your questionnaire process becomes, the higher the risk of compliance drift — where what's being communicated to customers diverges from what’s actually implemented.

This can create serious gaps, especially during audits or recertifications. If a security control is described one way in a questionnaire but implemented differently in practice, you could risk noncompliance, failed audits, or even legal exposure.

The Solution: Automate the Right Way with SecurityPal AI’s CAx Suite

SecurityPal AI’s Customer Assurance (CAx) suite combines the speed of AI with human oversight and enterprise-grade workflows — giving GRC teams the power to automate security reviews without sacrificing accuracy, context, or control.

Here’s how it works:

• AI-powered, human-reviewed automation — Complete complex security questionnaires 87x faster without sacrificing quality or nuance.
• Centralized, continuously updated knowledge library — Maintain a single source of truth across products, policies, certifications, and more, so answers stay current and consistent.
• Workflow automation — Manage intake, route requests, track status, and assign reviewers without spreadsheets or chaos.
• Collaboration tools — Loop in legal, product, or security stakeholders with a structured, trackable workflow. Eliminate email chains and Slack chaos.
• Security-first, enterprise-ready — SOC 2 Type II compliant, with granular access controls, audit logs, and seamless integrations into your existing GRC ecosystem.

With SecurityPal AI, GRC teams stay in control — without becoming bottlenecks. That means faster deal cycles, less burnout, stronger programs, and better customer experiences.

Ready to Stop Firefighting and Start Scaling?

Security questionnaires aren’t going away — but the manual chaos can. Let SecurityPal AI help your team move faster, work smarter, and lead with confidence. Book a demo.