SDE Technical Info
The Secure Data Environment Technical Information
The Academic Research Systems group within the Office of Academic and Administrative Information Systems department provides a secure data hosting service for research. Research data can be housed in a professionally staffed data center with the highest level of data security standards.
Data can be accessed from any PC or Mac connected to the UCSF internet directly or via VPN. Document management software will provide a secure encrypted connection for researchers to view, manipulate, and save their data entirely in this protected environment without requiring files to be stored on their own computers. Access to the research site requires investigators to log in using their UCSF login ID and password. Principle Investigators can authorize staff to access individual files or folders, and full audit reports are available.
Investigators connect to a website using a browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Safari) and are able to store and retrieve data.
The Secure Data Environment is supported in a secure, professional data center, locked and guarded 24x7 with biometric identifiers required for physical entry. Data exists on a private network with its own firewall and intrusion detection system.
Specifics:
· Multi-homed Tier 1 network (Zero downtime SLA)
· Bi-costal world-class data center hosted with Level 3 and Cogent communications with redundant power and HVAC systems.
· Symantec Backup Exec server agents for Oracle, SQL, MySQL, and Exchange servers with 7 nightly incremental backups.
· 14 local daily snapshots of full “crash consistent” server state
· Hourly off-site snapshots of full “crash consistent” server state with 40 hourly restore points for DR.
· Monthly archive of entire infrastructure that rolls to quarterly after 3 months.
· Managed policy based enterprise firewall using Cisco and Microsoft technologies
· Managed VPN access.
· Managed Active Directory for “Production Servers” and integration with UCSF Campus AD via trust.
