Lesson 567 of 2244
AI Vendor Due Diligence: The Questions That Reveal Real Safety Practice
Most AI vendor security questionnaires miss the AI-specific risks. Here's the question set that surfaces vendors with real safety practice from those with marketing veneer.
Adults & Professionals · Safety & Governance · ~7 min read
The premise
AI vendor risk is its own category; standard security questionnaires don't surface it.
What AI does well here
- Ask about training data provenance and any sensitive data exclusions
- Probe model attestation practices (model card, data sheet, evaluation results)
- Investigate incident response and disclosure practices for AI-specific failures
- Verify data handling — whether your data trains future models, retention windows, deletion rights
What AI cannot do
- Substitute for technical evaluation by ML-aware security engineers
- Replace contract terms that codify the answers
- Audit practices the vendor refuses to discuss
Key terms in this lesson
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