CAIQ vs AI-CAIQ: What Changes for AI Vendors?
CAIQ is associated with cloud-control assessment, while AI-CAIQ extends due diligence into AI-specific governance, model, data, safety and operational questions. Vendors should prepare overlapping but not identical evidence sets.
Practical difference in the evidence you need
| Area | CAIQ-style evidence | AI-CAIQ-style evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Access & security | Identity, encryption, logging, secure development | Same controls plus AI configuration/provider access where relevant |
| Data | Privacy, retention, residency, deletion | Prompt/output handling, training use, model-provider flows |
| Governance | Cloud/security governance | AI ownership, inventory, risk classification and approvals |
| Operations | Incident response and continuity | AI evaluation, monitoring, change review and harmful-output escalation |
Where the two questionnaires overlap
AI systems still depend on conventional cloud and security controls. Identity management, encryption, logging, supplier management, vulnerability handling, incident response and privacy practices remain relevant. AI-CAIQ does not make those foundations disappear; it adds questions that help a buyer understand risks created by models, training or inference data, evaluation, governance and human oversight.
This means vendors should avoid maintaining completely separate evidence silos. A strong response process reuses the same underlying security and privacy evidence where it applies, then adds AI-specific sources for the questions that traditional cloud controls do not answer.
When a buyer may ask for both
An enterprise customer may use a cloud questionnaire to evaluate the service environment and a separate AI assessment for the AI-enabled features inside that environment. If both arrive, align repeated claims across the responses. Contradictions in retention, providers, access controls or incident procedures create more review work than an explicit gap.
Use official CSA materials for authoritative definitions
Need help preparing the AI-specific side?
See the AI-CAIQ completion service and AI security questionnaire software.