Globus Announces Support for Protected Data

CHICAGO, Sept. 11, 2018 — Globus, a leading research data management service, today announced support for management of protected data, including data regulated by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI). With higher assurance levels for protected data, researchers can now easily manage Protected Health Information (PHI), for example, and share it securely with collaborators.

“Researchers need the ability to manage protected data the same way they manage other research data,” said Ian Foster, Globus co-founder, director of Argonne National Laboratory’s Data Science and Learning Division, and Professor of Computer Science at the University of Chicago. “With new support for higher assurance levels, the familiar Globus capabilities can be used with protected data — so researchers can easily move and share data while meeting the more stringent requirements associated with research involving human subjects.”

Globus higher assurance levels will benefit any organization or project that needs to manage protected data, particularly when shared by multiple researchers, such as institutions with secure research data enclaves; multi-institutional studies and collaborations using clinical data; and facilities distributing sensitive data to investigators and their collaborators.

“Using Globus to manage protected data solves an urgent need for my research and for the biomedical research community across the world,” said Dr. Jonathan Silverstein, Chief Research Informatics Officer for the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. “This release helps usher in a new era of secure data liquidity, where researchers are no longer practically limited to using highly distilled, de-identified data. When scientists can collaborate more easily on richer datasets via approved methods for sharing protected data, they can accelerate the pace of research and get to results faster. In my field, that means lives improved and even saved.”

Organizations that already use Globus as a platform to manage data can extend its usage to include protected data. One example is multi-institutional trials that require tighter control over sharing policies. In addition to leveraging existing Globus security features, such as multi-factor authentication and federated login, Globus now supports stricter identity verification, application and device isolation, and detailed audit logging. Data may be accessed via high assurance Globus endpoints, where users must authenticate with a specific identity within a specified time period within each application. Data managers have enhanced stewardship capabilities, such as detailed audit trails to allow close monitoring of all data access and sharing.

More information on Globus features that enable support for protected data is available here.

Globus is used by hundreds of research institutions and national facilities worldwide to manage data throughout the research lifecycle. Now the familiar Globus features can be used to transfer, share, and automate the handling of protected data, making it easier for researchers to focus on achieving new insights and discoveries, while ensuring compliance with, for example, NIST 800-171 and NIST 800-53 standards. Organizations that require written assurance that PHI will be appropriately safeguarded in order to comply with HIPAA, have the option to enter into a Business Associate Agreement (BAA).

Support for protected data is available now with Globus Connect Server version 5.2.  For subscription information, visit https://www.globus.org/subscriptions. To attend a live Q&A webinar about managing protected data, visit https://www.globus.org/events/webinar-managing-protected-data.

About Globus

Globus is software-as-a-service for research data management, used by hundreds of research institutions and high-performance computing (HPC) facilities worldwide. The service enables secure, reliable file transfer, sharing, and data publication for managing data throughout the research lifecycle. Globus is an initiative of the University of Chicago, and is supported in part by funding from the Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the Sloan Foundation. Visit us at www.globus.org.

Source: Globus