Common questions about the Data Defenders AI Readiness Assessment portal — for purchasers, Assessment Leads, and participants. Use the table of contents to jump to a topic, or scroll through to browse.
The Data Defenders AI Readiness Assessment is a structured online survey and toolset that guide your organization into a better understanding of its level of preparedness, issues, risks, and challenges in adopting and governing artificial intelligence to support both internal and external business functions. It evaluates maturity across multiple domains — strategy, governance, data, talent, infrastructure, and other areas — to produce an actionable report with prioritized recommendations.
Your organization's Assessment Lead invites a set of participants — typically the people in your organization who have visibility into the domains being assessed (executives, IT leaders, compliance owners, data stewards, and so on). Each participant answers from their own perspective. The report aggregates responses across participants.
About 60 minutes for each participant, though it depends on how detailed your answers are. You can save your progress and come back at any time before the deadline — there's no need to finish in one sitting.
On average, participants spend up to 1 (Small), 2 (Medium) and 3 (Large) hours completing their portion of the survey. The default survey window — the default time participants are allotted to complete the survey, in business days — is 5 (Small), 7 (Medium), and 10 (Large). The Assessment Lead can adjust this before launching the survey.
The time to complete each phase of the assessment project below assumes Self-Led pacing, where participants complete the various phases at their own pace and, where applicable, external parties required to submit information have specific windows to reply.
If you opt for Facilitator-Led, a Data Defenders consultant runs the data-collection portion as a single group session for participants to answer and discuss together. The length of the group session is 2-3 hrs (Small), 3-4 hours (Medium) and 5-6 hours (Large) to accommodate for interactive Q&A. Other totals are the same.
Phase definitions are included at the bottom of this answer.
Small Enterprise: 15–24 business days · ~3–5 weeks †
Medium Enterprise: 47–82 business days · ~10–17 weeks †
Large Enterprise (Self-Led): 75–107 business days · ~15–22 weeks †
Phase definitions
† Marked phases depend on participant or third-party response time. Phase 1 reflects the survey window during which participants complete their portion. Phase 2 reflects the asynchronous-completion window for the SWOT, TOWS, and Porter's Five Forces tools. Phase 7 includes the standard 2-week (10 business day) response window we issue to vendors. These windows are estimates — actual response time depends on participants and external parties and may run shorter or longer.
The report covers all assessment domains and includes prioritized observations, concerns, risks, and recommendations. It's designed to give your leadership team a clear picture of where you are today and what to do next.
After the last participant finishes, the report is generated automatically. The Assessment Lead receives it by email within 4 hours of completion of the final survey. They can also download it any time from your dashboard.
The Assessment Lead and the original assessment purchaser have direct access to the report. They are the interfaces that can then share the information with the rest of the purchasing organization.
3 years from the date of purchase. After that, the report and all associated data are permanently destroyed. We'll send you reminder notifications before that happens so you can download anything you want to keep.
Yes — anonymously. Access to raw/identifiable data is highly restricted. After your engagement closes, your responses (without any participant or company identifiers) are added to our aggregate dataset along with your company size and industry tags. We use this aggregate dataset for longer-term, time-spent, and industry analysis to improve the assessment over time. Individual responses, names, emails, and company identities are never included in this analysis.
There are three:
Purchaser — the person who bought the assessment. They have a Data Defenders account, can buy additional seats, can download the final report, and receive notifications about engagement milestones.
Assessment Lead — the person responsible for managing the engagement. They invite participants, set the survey deadline, monitor progress, and download the final report. They also have a Data Defenders account.
Participant — anyone who's been invited to fill out the assessment. Participants don't have an account; they access the survey through a personalized link sent to their email.
Yes. One account can hold both roles for the same engagement. When the Purchaser sets up the engagement, they can assign themselves as the Lead.
The Lead manages the day-to-day of the engagement: adding participants, sending reminders, replacing participants, force-closing the engagement, viewing individual responses. The Purchaser receives milestone notifications (engagement complete, replacements made, engagement closed, retention warnings) and can download the final report.
The purchaser can change the Lead if the Lead declines the invitation. After the Lead has accepted, contact Data Defenders to make a change.
Yes. Personal email addresses are not recommended and often blocked, and therefore cannot be used to purchase or distribute the assessment. We require a corporate or organizational email address to ensure assessment results are tied to a real organization. The same domain restriction applies between the Purchaser and the Assessment Lead — both must share the same root domain — so all parties with access to the assessment data are part of the same organization.
Participants invited by the Lead may use any non-public organizational email address. They only see and answer their own questions; they don't have access to other participants' responses, the final report, or any account credentials, so the same root-domain restriction isn't necessary. Public email providers (such as common consumer email services) are still blocked at the participant level — anyone responding professionally on behalf of an organization should have a non-public email.
The Assessment Lead has access to all participant responses, which can include sensitive information about your organization. Restricting the Lead role to someone at the same email domain as the Purchaser improves the ability to maintain the responses within your organization. This rule is enforced at setup; there is no override.
The Lead can invite participants from any non-public organizational email address. Public email providers (such as Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook.com, iCloud, and similar consumer email services) are not accepted as participant addresses — anyone responding professionally on behalf of an organization should have a non-public email.
The Lead is permitted to invite participants from outside the purchasing organization (such as contractors or partner organizations) but receives a warning before doing so. External participants only see their own questions and don't have access to the report or other participants' responses, but the Lead should still confirm that sharing assessment access with an external party is intended.
Subdomains of the same root domain are considered the same organization. For example, marcus@eu.acme.com and sarah@acme.com both resolve to acme.com and are treated as the same company. The check uses the registered root domain, so country-code variations like acme.co.uk are handled correctly.
You have 30 days from the date of purchase to complete setup. We'll send reminders at days 7, 14, and 25 if setup is still pending. If the 30-day window expires without setup, your engagement will be put on hold and you'll need to contact Data Defenders to reactivate it.
The Purchaser confirms a few details about their organization, assigns the Assessment Lead, and the engagement is created. The assigned Lead then receives an invitation by email and can accept or decline.
The Purchaser is notified and can assign someone else. There's no penalty for declining — it's better that the right person is in the role.
The Lead launches the survey from their dashboard once they've set up the participant list. Each participant then receives an email with their personalized link.
Every question lets you mark "I don't know" and continue — please don't guess. Your honest "I don't know" gives the report writer better signal than a made-up answer.
Yes, automatically as you go. You can close your browser and come back at any time before the deadline. Your link is unique to you, so don't share it.
You can go back and change any answer at any time before final, full assessment submission. Your answers save automatically as you go. Only when you click "Submit assessment" on the final review page is your full set of responses locked. If you submit by mistake, your Assessment Lead can reopen it for you, as long as the engagement deadline hasn't passed.
Your responses (whatever you've completed) remain in the system and you are still able to complete the survey unless the Lead executes a forced-close of the engagement. After a forced-close, no further changes are possible. Reach out to your Assessment Lead if you can't complete the assessment in time.
Your responses are visible to your Assessment Lead, who will see them aggregated with other participants' responses in the final report. They are not shared outside your organization. Data Defenders staff will access responses only when actively supporting your engagement, and access is logged.
Each page of the assessment and the reports display your email address as a light watermark in the background. This discourages unauthorized copying of assessment content via screenshots — any captured image is traceable to the person who took the screenshot. The watermark is faint enough not to interfere with reading.
The assessment content, questions and structure, is Data Defenders' intellectual property. The assessment participant responses are confidential to the assessing organization. You are free to share the completed assessment and reports within your organization per your organization's data control and distribution policies. The footer reminds everyone — participants, Leads, and anyone who happens to see the information — that the content can't be redistributed without written consent from both Data Defenders and your organization.
Reminder emails can be sent from the assessment platform to participants that are lagging on completion of their assessment or haven't finished by the deadline.
The initial survey invitation is not counted as a reminder.
No. There's a hard cap of 3 reminders per participant per engagement. After that, the contacts would take place outside the platform as a more personal interaction is probably required.
If timely participation and/or completion become an issue, the Assessment Lead can send reminders to the lagging participants. If a participant fails to respond or improve, the participant can be replaced before survey completion. Any collected responses are automatically destroyed when replacement is activated. A new participant is sent a fresh invitation.
Yes — 3 replacements per engagement, only counting participants who had started the assessment but didn't finish. Pre-start swaps don't count against this limit. Once the 3-replacement budget is used, additional replacements require purchasing additional seats.
Each tier comes with a maximum number of seats included and purchasable.
Small — 2 participants included, 8 additional seats available for purchase
Medium — 5 participants included, 10 additional seats available for purchase
Large — 10 participants included, 90 additional seats available for purchase
The Purchaser can buy additional seats, up to the maximum, at any time. The Lead is notified when the seat count goes up, so they can add the new participants whenever they are ready.
Full refund before sending the assessment leads.
Full refund if the assessments have been sent out and the assessment is force-stopped before any of the participants have reached 25% complete.
After that, no refunds, but you could delay the assessment until a future date if you contact Data Defenders.
3 years from the date of purchase. This includes participant responses, the final report, the activity log, and your account associations with the engagement.
The data is permanently destroyed. This is a one-way, automated process. After destruction, no Data Defenders staff can recover the data — so download anything you want to keep before then.
Yes. We send a notification 30 days before destruction to the purchaser and the Assessment Lead so you have time to download the report. After destruction, we send a confirmation email to the same contacts.
Yes — contact Data Defenders to request early destruction.
Encrypted, on infrastructure managed by Data Defenders. We do not sell or share assessment data with third parties.
Purchasers and Leads log in with email and password at the portal login page. Participants don't have accounts — they use the personalized link sent to their email.
Click "Forgot password" on the login page. We'll email you a reset link. The link expires in 1 hour for security.
Reply to one of the reset emails — we'll investigate.
No. One account per email address. If you've been a Purchaser for one engagement and a Lead for another, both roles live under the same account.
Use the contact information in the Purchaser or Lead account page or call us with purchase details and we can reactivate your engagement.
Try copying and pasting the full URL into your browser. If that doesn't work, reach out to your Assessment Lead — they can resend your invitation, or copy the invitation link from their dashboard and send it to you directly.
You may be logged in with a different email than the one used at purchase or assignment. Log out and log back in with the email that received the invitation. Otherwise contact Data Defenders via the website contact function.
Reach out to your Purchaser — they can re-assign the Lead role to you from within the assessment setup page so long as they have not already assigned it to someone else.
Either the participant has already completed the assessment, or they've already received the maximum 3 reminders. The system shows the count next to the button (e.g., "Send reminder (2/3)").
Learn more about the AI Readiness Assessment, or reach out to discuss whether it's a fit for your organization.