Inventive AI security review checklist

Security, InfoSec, and procurement teams need more than big AI claims — they need a clear, verifiable way to evaluate whether an RFP/SecQ tool is safe to deploy. This checklist is designed for teams running a security review on Inventive AI so you can move from “interesting demo” to “approved vendor” with clear, documented answers.

Below is a practical, point‑by‑point security review checklist you can use as you evaluate Inventive AI for RFPs, RFIs, and security questionnaires.

1. Data Protection & Privacy

1.1 Data Residency & Storage

Understand where data is stored
- Confirm the primary cloud provider and regions used for data storage.
- Verify whether you can choose or constrain data regions (e.g., US-only, EU-only) if required by your policies.
Clarify what types of data are stored
- Uploaded RFPs, RFIs, security questionnaires, and proposal documents.
- Indexed content from connected sources like Google Drive, SharePoint, Notion, Confluence, Salesforce, Slack, Jira, websites, and legacy spreadsheets.
- User metadata (accounts, roles, audit logs, comments, tasks).
Retention & deletion
- Confirm retention policies for workspaces, documents, and logs.
- Verify how deletion works (soft vs. hard delete) and expected time to purge in backups.

What’s in place with Inventive AI:
Inventive AI is built for enterprise sales and security workflows where proposal data is sensitive by default. Storage and processing are scoped to customer tenants, with clear boundaries for your organization’s documents and knowledge sources.

1.2 Data in Transit & at Rest

Encryption in transit
- Confirm use of TLS 1.2+ for all client–server and service–service communication.
Encryption at rest
- Confirm that all customer data (documents, embeddings, metadata) is encrypted at rest using strong industry-standard algorithms (e.g., AES-256).
Key management
- Ask how encryption keys are managed, rotated, and protected (e.g., KMS/HSM usage, key rotation cadence).

What’s in place with Inventive AI:
Inventive AI uses end‑to‑end encryption — data is encrypted in transit and at rest. Keys are managed using secure, audited key management systems consistent with SOC 2 Type II controls.

1.3 Data Privacy & Zero Data Retention

Zero Data Retention (ZDR) with model providers
- Confirm that third‑party model providers (e.g., OpenAI, Anthropic) have zero data retention enabled for your traffic.
- Verify that your prompts, documents, and completions are not used to train those foundation models.
Data isolation
- Confirm that your data is not used to improve other customers’ models or features.
Personal data handling
- Understand how PII in your RFPs/SecQs is processed, stored, and logged.
- Ask whether there are tools or options to minimize or mask PII where required.

What’s in place with Inventive AI:
Inventive AI operates with Zero Data Retention agreements with providers like OpenAI and Anthropic, so your prompts and documents are not retained or used for model training. Your data stays within your tenant and is not used to build a shared cross‑customer model.

2. Compliance & Governance

2.1 SOC 2 Type II Compliance

Report availability
- Request Inventive AI’s latest SOC 2 Type II report under NDA.
- Review in scope systems and control domains (security, availability, confidentiality).
Bridge letters
- Ask for bridge letters if the report period doesn’t fully cover your evaluation period.
Remediation tracking
- Review any noted exceptions and how they’re mitigated.

What’s in place with Inventive AI:
Inventive AI is SOC 2 Type II compliant, reflecting audited controls around security, availability, and confidentiality — aligned with the expectations of InfoSec and compliance teams assessing revenue‑critical tools.

2.2 Policies, Procedures & Vendor Risk

Security policies
- Request high‑level security policies (access control, incident response, change management).
Vendor management
- Understand how Inventive manages its own sub‑processors and third‑party vendors.
- Request a list of sub‑processors and their roles (cloud provider, logging, LLM providers, etc.).
Business continuity & disaster recovery
- Confirm RPO/RTO targets and recovery testing cadence.
- Ask how DR scenarios are handled for your tenant and data.

3. Identity, Access Management & Permissions

3.1 Authentication & SSO

Single Sign-On (SSO)
- Confirm support for SAML-based SSO (Okta, Azure AD, Google Workspace, etc.).
Multi-factor authentication (MFA)
- Determine whether MFA is enforced via your IdP and whether Inventive has any additional MFA options.
Session management
- Ask about session timeouts, idle session handling, and device/browser restrictions.

What’s in place with Inventive AI:
Inventive supports enterprise authentication with SSO (SAML), allowing your IdP to be the source of truth for identity, MFA, and access policies.

3.2 Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)

Granular roles
- Verify that Inventive exposes role‑based access controls aligned with RFP/SecQ workflows (e.g., admin, proposal manager, contributor, reviewer).
Project-level permissions
- Confirm you can restrict access by RFP/project, customer, or business unit.
Knowledge source scoping
- Ensure you can scope which users can search or draft from specific knowledge sources (e.g., security content vs. marketing content).
Least privilege
- Validate that users only see workspaces and documents they’re explicitly allowed to access.

What’s in place with Inventive AI:
Inventive offers role-based access controls and workspace/project‑level permissions so teams can collaborate without exposing all RFPs or all knowledge sources to everyone.

4. Application Security & Multi‑Tenant Isolation

4.1 Tenant Isolation

Logical isolation
- Confirm how Inventive separates customer data at the application and database layers.
Access boundaries
- Ask how cross‑tenant access is technically prevented and audited.
Penetration testing
- Request recent third‑party penetration testing summaries and remediation approach.

What’s in place with Inventive AI:
Inventive uses tenant isolation at the data and application layers to ensure one customer’s RFPs, security questionnaires, and knowledge sources are never visible to another tenant.

4.2 Secure Development Practices

SDLC controls
- Verify that Inventive follows secure development practices (code review, static analysis, dependency scanning).
Environment separation
- Confirm strict separation between development, staging, and production environments.
Change management
- Ask about change approval processes and rollback capabilities.

5. Knowledge Sources & Integrations

5.1 Connecting Internal Systems

Inventive’s value comes from grounding responses in your real content — Google Drive, SharePoint, Notion, Confluence, Salesforce, Slack, Jira, websites, and legacy spreadsheets. Security teams should review how each connection is authorized and scoped.

OAuth & permissions
- Check how Inventive requests access to Google Drive, SharePoint, Notion, Confluence, Salesforce, Slack, Jira, etc.
- Verify access scopes are minimized (only files/spaces you explicitly select).
Indexing behavior
- Clarify whether Inventive copies content, stores embeddings, or keeps only references.
- Confirm how frequently indexes are updated and how revocations propagate.
Revoking access
- Verify you can revoke integration access centrally via your IdP or the original system (e.g., Google Workspace admin console, Azure AD).

What’s in place with Inventive AI:
Inventive creates a Unified Knowledge Hub across your sources while respecting each system’s permissions. Content is indexed so the AI can draft answers, but access is still controlled by your roles and project permissions.

5.2 Data Minimization & Scoping

Source-level controls
- Ensure you can select which folders, spaces, or repositories to index instead of granting blanket access.
Customer‑specific segmentation
- For highly sensitive customers or deals, confirm you can isolate content to specific projects or workspaces.

6. AI Security: Hallucination, Traceability & Controls

This is a critical area: a secure AI system cannot invent facts or submit untraceable answers in RFPs and security questionnaires.

6.1 Grounding, Citations & Confidence Scoring

Source‑grounded answers
- Confirm that draft responses are grounded in your internal knowledge sources, not the open web.
Sentence‑level citations
- Verify that each answer includes sentence‑level citations back to original documents (RFPs, policies, past proposals, knowledge bases).
Confidence ratings
- Check that each answer is assigned a confidence score to guide review effort.

What’s in place with Inventive AI:
Inventive’s AI RFP Contextual Engine generates drafts grounded in your connected sources — Google Drive, SharePoint, Notion, Confluence, Salesforce, Slack, past RFPs, and more — and returns sentence‑level citations and confidence scores so reviewers can quickly verify what’s safe to submit.

6.2 Anti‑Hallucination & Gap Handling

No fabrication policy
- Confirm that when your knowledge base lacks information, the system flags gaps instead of guessing.
Explicit missing‑info signals
- Check how the UI and exports indicate that an answer is incomplete or requires SME input.
Configurable behavior
- Ask if you can adjust how aggressively gaps are flagged (e.g., stricter for security questionnaires).

What’s in place with Inventive AI:
Inventive includes anti‑hallucination safeguards: when the platform can’t find a reliable answer in your knowledge, it flags a gap instead of fabricating. This is core to protecting your security posture and avoiding misrepresentation in vendor assessments.

6.3 Conflict & Consistency Detection

Conflict detection
- Confirm that the platform can detect in‑proposal conflicts (e.g., contradictory answers about encryption, logs, backups).
Stale & duplicate content
- Check whether the system identifies outdated or duplicate content across Drive, SharePoint, Confluence, etc.
Content governance
- Understand who can approve “golden” answers or canonical language for sensitive topics (e.g., encryption, data retention, incident response).

What’s in place with Inventive AI:
Inventive’s AI content manager scans your knowledge to catch stale, duplicate, or conflicting content, and its in‑proposal conflict detection helps prevent contradictory submissions — a key risk in security questionnaires where misalignment can stall or kill deals.

7. Operational Controls & Auditability

7.1 Audit Logs & Monitoring

User activity logging
- Verify that Inventive logs key activities: logins, document uploads, exports, permission changes, and integration changes.
AI action logging
- Ask how prompt, response, and source usage is logged for audit and troubleshooting.
Access to logs
- Confirm that admins can access or export audit logs for compliance and investigations.

7.2 Incident Response & Reporting

Incident response plan
- Request a high‑level overview of Inventive’s incident response process (detection, triage, communication, remediation).
Notification timelines
- Clarify SLAs for customer notification in the event of a security incident.
Designated contacts
- Confirm points of contact (security@… email, customer success, etc.) for reporting suspicious activity.

8. Use‑Case‑Specific Checks for Security Questionnaires

If you’re specifically reviewing Inventive AI for security questionnaires (SecQ) and vendor security assessments:

SecQ template support
- Confirm support for common formats (Excel, portals, PDFs) and how data is handled in each case.
Security‑sensitive content
- Verify that security policies, architecture diagrams, and control descriptions pulled from your sources are stored, encrypted, and permissioned appropriately.
Reviewer workflows
- Ensure security and compliance teams can easily review, edit, and approve AI‑generated answers with full citation visibility.
Agent‑assisted analysis
- For strategic work (e.g., identifying control gaps or competitive differentiators), confirm that Inventive’s AI Agents Hub keeps these explorations within your tenant and respects permissions.

What’s in place with Inventive AI:
Inventive’s AI Agents for Security Questionnaires are designed to cut questionnaire time by 90% while improving answer quality and consistency. Customers report 50%+ higher win rates and 2.5X more submissions — but critically, every answer remains auditable with citations, confidence scoring, and gap flags, so InfoSec leaders retain control.

9. Practical Review Workflow You Can Follow

To streamline your Inventive AI security review, you can structure it as:

Document collection
- Request: SOC 2 Type II report, sub‑processor list, security whitepaper, data flow diagrams, and a sample DPA.
Technical deep‑dive
- Run through: encryption, tenant isolation, SSO/RBAC, logging, DR, and Zero Data Retention setup with a Inventive solution architect or security lead.
AI behavior validation
- In a sandbox:
  - Upload a sample RFP and security questionnaire.
  - Connect a limited test Drive/SharePoint folder.
  - Observe: citations, confidence scores, gap flagging, and conflict detection in action.
Policy alignment
- Map Inventive’s controls to your internal security, privacy, and vendor risk requirements.
Contractual safeguards
- Finalize: DPA, security addendum, ZDR clauses, sub‑processor commitments, and incident notification timelines.

Final Thoughts

A secure AI RFP/SecQ platform must do two things at once: accelerate throughput and not introduce new risk. Inventive AI is built specifically for that balance — combining SOC 2 Type II controls, encryption, tenant isolation, RBAC, SSO (SAML), and Zero Data Retention with AI primitives like citations, confidence scoring, gap detection, and conflict checks.

Use this checklist as your internal framework to validate each of those claims. If you’d like to walk through any item live with our team — from architecture diagrams to SOC 2 controls to a sandbox demo of AI behavior — you can get a tailored security‑focused walkthrough here:

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