Generative AI is rapidly transforming how organizations manage third‑party cybersecurity risk. From drafting responses to analyzing assessments, GenAI promises speed, scale, and efficiency. But as Gartner states in Gartner Predicts 2026, faster doesn’t always mean safer - and in some cases, it can mean the opposite.
The Rise of AI‑Driven Questionnaires
Third‑party cybersecurity questionnaires have long been criticized for being labor‑intensive and inefficient. To address growing scale and resource constraints, organizations are increasingly turning to GenAI to automate both sides of the process: vendors use AI to complete questionnaires, while requesting organizations use AI to analyze them.
By 2028, Gartner predicts that 70% of organizations and vendors will use GenAI for both completing and reviewing TPCRM questionnaires. At first glance, this seems like progress—shorter onboarding cycles, fewer manual reviews, and reduced staffing demands.
The Hidden Risk: Output Degradation
Gartner makes clear that the risk goes far beyond hallucinations or isolated mistakes. When AI‑generated questionnaire responses are fed into AI‑driven analysis tools, the result is output degradation: errors compound, signal weakens, and the connection to actual risk conditions erodes. Over time, this recursive loop drives up noise while driving down insight.
The consequence is that organizations may move through questionnaires faster than ever, while having less assurance that the outputs represent a vendor’s true cybersecurity posture. What appears to be efficiency can quickly devolve into “security theater.”
Why Questionnaires Were Never Enough
Even without AI, questionnaires have always been limited. Gartner emphasizes that they are point‑in‑time self‑assessments and a poor proxy for ongoing third‑party risk. They capture what a vendor says about its controls on a specific day, under specific conditions, often framed to meet policy or customer expectations rather than to expose latent weaknesses.
By the time questionnaires are reviewed, approved, and filed, the underlying risk picture may already be different. The result is a structural mismatch between the static nature of questionnaires and the dynamic nature of modern digital supply chains. This gap only widens as third‑party ecosystems grow and dependencies become more complex.
GenAI on accelerates this limitation. As AI lowers the cost of producing and analyzing questionnaires, organizations can generate more assessments, more often, with far less human effort. Vendors can rapidly draft polished responses, and buyers can process large volumes of data in seconds. But if the underlying instrument is still a self‑reported snapshot, scaling it primarily multiplies its weaknesses.
The Inevitable Pivot Away From Check‑Box Risk
Gartner predicts that CISOs will increasingly abandon questionnaires as the primary mechanism for managing third‑party cyber risk, treating them as a compliance requirement rather than a security control. Instead, leaders will prioritize solutions that provide in‑flight visibility into third‑party relationships. This shift reflects a broader move away from validation toward active risk management - monitoring dependencies, detecting incidents early, and responding quickly when issues arise.
Using AI the Right Way
Gartner does not suggest abandoning AI altogether. Instead, it argues for applying GenAI and other AI techniques where they create meaningful security value - redirecting human effort toward higher‑value risk management activities rather than further automating check‑box exercises. That means using AI to support tasks such as continuous monitoring, correlation of external signals, prioritization of emerging issues, and faster escalation when third‑party conditions change.
When applied thoughtfully, AI can help organizations monitor larger vendor ecosystems, surface patterns that may be difficult to detect manually, and support faster, more informed decision‑making. It can also reduce time spent on repetitive administrative work, allowing security teams to focus on judgment, investigation, and response. The key is ensuring AI strengthens resilience by improving visibility and actionability—not simply increasing throughput or productivity metrics.
What This Means for Your TPCRM Program
It's no surprise that GenAI will reshape third‑party risk management, but success depends on how it’s used. Organizations that simply automate existing questionnaire‑driven processes risk moving faster in the wrong direction. Those that pair AI with continuous monitoring, lifecycle‑based risk management, and integrated cyber GRC will be better equipped to manage real‑world threats. In the AI era, effective TPCRM isn’t about answering more questions, it’s about seeing risk as it unfolds.
To learn more, explore Gartner’s Predicts 2026 research on the future of third‑party cyber risk management - or connect with our team to discuss how these insights apply to your organization.
