Assessment templates

What are vendor assessment templates in TrustLens?

TrustLens allows you to create programmatic vendor assessment templates that integrate with your existing common control framework, streamlining the evaluation and submission process. You can also upload and use your own questionnaire if you prefer to work with existing documentation. Both options are available to support your vendor assessment requirements.

To start creating a new assessment template,

1. Go to your TrustLens program and click on “Assessment Templates.”
   The following screenshot shows the list of all assessment templates.
   
   
2. Click on the “+ New Template” button. The following dialogue box is displayed:
   

You can build a new assessment template in two ways:

1. Building a programmatic assessment template in TrustCloud
2. Uploading custom assessment templates

Let’s understand both ways in detail.

Building a programmatic assessment template in TrustCloud

This enables a programmatic assessment of the vendor’s security posture by analyzing how their controls and policies meet your control requirements. This option is recommended by TrustCloud as it helps with programmatic risk calculation and gap analysis, auto-fill vendor responses, et cetera.

1. Click on the “Build by mapping controls you want to test the vendor against” option.
   
2. Click on the “Proceed” button.
3. Enter the name of the new assessment and select the format of the assessment.
   
4. Select an answer format and click on the “Create Template” button.
   The new assessment template has been added to the template list.

Uploading custom assessment templates

You can upload a custom security questionnaire. This is a completely customizable option. You need to manually enter all the information once the vendor returns the completed assessment.

1. Click on the “Upload a custom security questionnaire” option.
2. Enter a template name.
   
3. Upload a template file in PDF, DOCX, PNG, PPT, or ZIP format.
4. Click on the “Add Template” button.
5. The new assessment template has been added to the template list.

Editing, downloading or deleting an existing template

You can edit, download, or delete an existing template by navigating to the three dots in the top right corner of the existing template. Please note that any changes made to a template will impact new assessments only.

To edit the template,

1. Click on the “Edit” option from the drop-down menu.
2. You can view all the controls that are mapped in the particular template and change if it allows you to enter “free text” or “multiple choice answers,” if it requires comments, if it requires evidence, etc.
3. Select the “Edit Question” icon from the three-dot menu in front of the question.
   
4. Click on the “Save Changes” button.

To download the template,

1. Click on the “Download” option from the drop-down menu in front of the assessment template.
2. When you download a template, it is extracted in .xlsx format. This file has all the controls listed and the questions related to each control. You can fill in the details.

   

To delete the template,

Click on the “Delete” option from the drop-down menu in front of the assessment template. Please confirm in the dialogue box, and your template will be deleted and removed from the list of assessment templates.