Safe Haven Services Overview

The EPCC SHS

The EPCC Safe Haven Services (SHS) that enable researchers to work with sensitive data in a secure environment. These services are operated by EPCC in partnership with Safe Haven controllers who manage the Information Governance (IG) appropriate for the research activities and the data access of their Safe Haven service.

The SHS service offers secure data sharing and analysis environments allowing researchers access to sensitive data under the terms and conditions prescribed by the Data Providers. The service prioritises the requirements of the Data Provider over the demands of the Researcher, and is an academic SHS operating under the guidance of the Five Safes framework.

The SHS has dedicated, private cloud infrastructure at EPCC's Advanced Computing Facility (ACF) data centre and has its own high-performance file systems. When a new Safe Haven service is commissioned in the SHS, it is created in a new virtual private cloud providing the Safe Haven service controller with an independent IG domain separate from other Safe Havens in the SHS. All SHS service infrastructure and all SHS project data are hosted at ACF.

All Safe Haven Services can access services provided under the EPCC SHS umbrella, such as HPC and GPU clusters. These are exclusive to the SHS, and some such services, e.g. the HPC and GPU clusters, are shared across Safe Havens.

Roles and responsibilities

Safe Haven operator

It is the responsibility of EPCC as the Safe Haven operator to design, implement and administer the technical controls required to deliver the Safe Haven security regime required by the Safe Haven controller.

Safe Haven controller

The role of the Safe Haven controller is to satisfy the needs of the researchers and the data suppliers. The controller is responsible for guaranteeing the confidentiality needs of the data suppliers and matching these with the availability needs of the researchers.

Typically Safe Haven controllers will have research project co-ordination teams and may assign a research coordinator to a project as the main contact.

Researcher

Users of Safe Haven services must be researchers approved by the Safe Haven controller according to their IG requirements.

Users have a responsibility to use the service within the technical and IG constraints and regulations as defined by a user agreement between them and the Safe Haven controller.

Contact

All user queries and requests must be directed to the Safe Haven controller who manages user access and communications to their Safe Haven service according to their specific IG requirements.

If you are a researcher looking for access to a Safe Haven, please contact the Safe Haven controller.

If you are an existing user of the Safe Haven services and are facing any issues, want to request access to additional services, or have any questions, please contact your assigned research coordinator.

For any general enquiries about the EPCC SHS or the Safe Haven services, please contact EPCC.