A growing number of UK businesses are being asked to prove their security posture to a customer, with no in-house function to do it. This page sets out the problem, the general options for solving it, and how B5 Cyber approaches it in practice.
Large customers are under growing regulatory pressure of their own, principally NIS2 in the EU and the UK's own incoming Cyber Security and Resilience Bill, and they are passing elements of that pressure down their supply chain through contract clauses and security questionnaires. A business does not need to be directly regulated to feel the effect, it only needs to sell to someone who is.
This is most visible right now in automotive, aerospace, and medical device supply chains, where Tier 1 manufacturers are flowing requirements down to Tier 2 and Tier 3 suppliers, and among managed service providers, whose own supply chains fall within the incoming UK Bill's wider scope. Most affected businesses have no CISO, no security team, and often no IT manager at all, so the questionnaire lands on whoever runs Operations, Quality, or the business itself, with no established way to answer it.
Someone in the business drafts answers from scratch each time. Cheapest in theory, but slow, inconsistent between questionnaires, and it pulls a senior person off running the business for days.
GRC platforms like Assura give a team a persistent place to hold evidence and answer questionnaires from. Effective, but it still needs someone who knows what good evidence looks like to run it well.
A consultancy builds and maintains the evidence base and answers each questionnaire on your behalf. Highest touch, but the fastest route to an accurate answer with no new tool to learn.
B5 Cyber's answer sits in the third category, managed rather than self-serve, because most of the businesses facing this problem do not have anyone free to run a platform themselves. Our Supplier Assurance service builds a standing capability profile for your business, covering your controls, policies, and evidence, and uses it to turn round accurate, defensible answers to any customer questionnaire within 48 to 72 hours, keeping the profile current as your business changes.
Underneath, the profile itself is built and held in Assura, a GRC platform B5 Cyber holds a consultancy-style licence to. You get the benefit of a structured, auditable evidence base without having to license, learn, or manage the platform yourself, and if your needs grow beyond a managed service, a direct licence to the platform is a natural next step, with B5 Cyber continuing to support the interpretation and upkeep of your profile either way. Read our independent take on the platform itself on the Assura solution page.
B5 Cyber builds and answers from your profile on your behalf. Nobody on your team needs to learn a new platform.
Your profile answers every customer's questionnaire from the same evidence base, not a fresh document each time.
Pay per questionnaire, or a fair-use-capped annual plan for suppliers facing several recurring customers.
Real gaps a questionnaire surfaces feed naturally into Risk Assessment or vCISO work, if you want to close them properly.
See pricing and how the service works on the Supplier Assurance page, or book a call and we will tell you exactly what it will take to answer it well.