Crossing borders without leaving – sharing secure data internationally

●Due to their sensitive nature, access to secure/controlled data is highly restricted, they are only accessible remotely via Trusted Research Environments (TREs) or on-site via dedicated Safe Rooms.

●Internationally, researchers often face significant hurdles in terms of time and financial burden having to travel to a Safe Room, a hurdle not many could overcome.  In recent years, work has intensified to enable data access across international borders (IDAN, SSHOC) via Safe Room Remote Access. One of the achievements of SSHOC WP 5.4 was to set up a bilateral agreement between the UK Data Service and GESIS, Germany allowing a remote connection between the two services. 

●Remote connections offer a safe environment to access confidential data. Datasets remain on the secure servers of the data provider (in location A) and are accessed via a secure encrypted internet connection (from location B) where all analysis is done. No physical transfer of the data ever occurs. The Safe Room at location B provides additional physical controls (e.g. Safe Room access and monitoring). This agreement allows researchers in Germany to access a range of secure datasets made available by the UKDS SecureLab from the GESIS Safe Rooms in Germany and vice versa. The agreement is available as a template to help facilitate the setting up of further remote connections. Once the legal agreements were in place, the technical set-up started. Thin Clients were configured, exchanged between partners and installed in the Safe Room of the other service. Technical tests were carried out, followed by researcher tests.

●Our talk will showcase the connection set up UK Data Service - GESIS and highlight some of the key challenges as well as solutions which we found along the way.