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| Secure eResearch Platform | |
|---|---|
| Name | Secure eResearch Platform |
| Purpose | sensitive research data hosting, analysis, collaboration |
| Developers | assorted universities, research institutes, technology companies |
| Launched | 2010s– |
| Website | N/A |
Secure eResearch Platform
A Secure eResearch Platform is an environment designed to host, process, and share sensitive research datasets and digital artefacts for institutions such as Harvard University, Stanford University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Cambridge, University of Oxford. It supports workflows used by researchers affiliated with National Institutes of Health, European Commission, Wellcome Trust, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and integrates services from vendors like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, IBM.
A Secure eResearch Platform provides guarded compute and storage for projects funded by agencies such as National Science Foundation, UK Research and Innovation, Australian Research Council, European Research Council and used by consortia like Human Genome Project, ENCODE Project, CERN. It balances obligations under statutes and agreements such as Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, General Data Protection Regulation, Common Rule and procurement frameworks including Federal Acquisition Regulation. Deployments often involve partners like National Center for Supercomputing Applications, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Sanger Institute.
Core architecture typically layers virtualized compute from Intel Corporation or AMD with orchestration by Kubernetes and management stacks from Red Hat, Canonical (company), VMware; storage uses systems by NetApp, Dell EMC, Pure Storage and research file systems like Lustre or Ceph. Identity and access integrates Okta, Shibboleth, Active Directory and authentication protocols such as OAuth 2.0, SAML 2.0, OpenID Connect. Workflow engines and data pipelines leverage tools like Apache Airflow, Nextflow, Snakemake, Galaxy (bioinformatics) and analysis environments such as Jupyter Notebook, RStudio, MATLAB. Networking and edge services incorporate technologies from Cisco Systems, Juniper Networks and content delivery via Cloudflare. Monitoring and observability use Prometheus (software), Grafana, ELK Stack.
Security controls map to frameworks such as NIST Cybersecurity Framework, ISO/IEC 27001, FedRAMP, PCI DSS where applicable; legal compliance addresses obligations referenced by HIPAA Privacy Rule, GDPR, Freedom of Information Act for public institutions. Cryptographic protections employ standards like Advanced Encryption Standard, Transport Layer Security, hardware security modules from Thales Group or Yubico; key management may use AWS Key Management Service or Azure Key Vault. Threat detection integrates vendors such as CrowdStrike, Splunk, Palo Alto Networks and incident response workflows reference practices from SANS Institute; audit trails and provenance are recorded for oversight by bodies including Institutional Review Board, Human Research Ethics Committee and funders such as National Health and Medical Research Council (Australia).
Data governance frameworks rely on policies from Digital Curation Centre, DataCite, OpenAIRE and metadata standards like Dublin Core, Schema.org, FAIR Principles guidance from GO FAIR. Persistent identifiers employ DOI, Handle System, ORCID for researchers. Data lifecycle and retention are aligned with contracts from Wellcome Trust or mandates from European Research Council; controlled vocabularies and ontologies may reference Gene Ontology, SNOMED CT, ICD-10 where biomedical data are present. Data sharing agreements and licensing draw from models like Creative Commons, Open Data Commons, and institutional policy offices at University of California campuses.
User onboarding and collaboration integrate institutional identity providers such as InCommon, eduGAIN, Federation (Internet) arrangements; collaboration platforms and repositories include GitHub, GitLab, Zenodo, Figshare, Dataverse. Project management uses integrations with Atlassian, Trello (software), Slack (software) or Microsoft Teams while reproducible research is supported by tools like Docker, Singularity, Conda. Training and accreditation often reference programs from Coursera, edX, Software Carpentry and professional standards provided by Association for Computing Machinery or IEEE.
Deployment models vary across cloud, on-premises, and hybrid involving providers such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, national clouds like G-Cloud and research infrastructures such as PRACE, XSEDE. Operations adopt IT service management from ITIL with configuration management tools like Ansible, Puppet, Chef and continuous integration from Jenkins, GitLab CI/CD. Backup, replication and disaster recovery planning often follow guidance from National Institute of Standards and Technology and use archiving services from Internet Archive or institutional repositories like JSTOR.
Typical use cases include population genomics projects at institutions like Broad Institute and Sanger Institute, clinical trial data hosted for consortia funded by National Institutes of Health, environmental sensing repositories used by NASA, European Space Agency missions, social science microdata curated by Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research and high-energy physics collaborations at CERN. Case studies often reference deployments at Wellcome Sanger Institute for genomics, health data platforms at NHS Digital, academic partnerships with Microsoft Research and cloud pilots run by Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Category:Research infrastructure