Safe Haven Services

The EIDF Trusted Research Environment (TRE) hosts several Safe Haven services 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.

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 demanded by the 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.

The 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 TRE operating under the guidance of the Five Safes framework.

The TRE has dedicated, private cloud infrastructure at EPCC's Advanced Computing Facility (ACF) data centre and has its own HPC cluster and high-performance file systems. When a new Safe Haven service is commissioned in the TRE 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 TRE. All TRE service infrastructure and all TRE project data are hosted at ACF.

If you have any questions about the EIDF TRE or about Safe Haven services, please contact us.