For the person asking, this isn't a detail. A vendor that fails review burns the internal capital they spent sponsoring you, so the question is a tripwire: they're listening for whether you actually know, or whether you reassure.

Vague confidence is the worst answer in the room. Security people are professionally trained to treat smoothness as a flag; a precise partial answer beats a polished complete-sounding one.

Answer what you know with specifics: named certifications, named practices, where data lives, who can see it. Specificity is the credential.

Park what you don't know with a commitment, not a shrug: a named document, a named person, a date. “I'll have our security overview and an answer on data residency to you tomorrow” keeps trust intact.

Never improvise a compliance claim. One invented yes, discovered later, retroactively poisons every other claim you made in the room.

“Where does the data live?” Answer in one sentence with the region and provider. Hesitation here reads as not knowing your own product.

“Has this been pen-tested?” Yes or no, with the date, or a parked follow-up. Nothing in between.

“We'd need this on-prem.” A requirement, not a question. Confirm whether it's hard or habit; plenty of on-prem demands are openers.