Securing and Exchanging Research Data

The Regional Computing Centre of the University of Cologne provides various options to find the best and most secure storage solution for your research data.

Please consider which requirements the storage medium must meet: for example, do you work collaboratively and from several locations? Does this mean that the data must be available online? Do you process sensitive data that needs to be protected by a password?

If possible, define a backup strategy at the beginning of the project. It is recommended to have at least three copies of your data on at least two different storage media, of which at least one should be decentralized (e.g. other server).

Pay particular attention to restricting access to sensitive data physically (locked cabinet / room) and virtually (password protection). Under no circumstances should you store this data in a cloud. Please note in particular that files in cloud services such as "dropbox" may not be sufficiently protected for data protection purposes, as the servers of these services are often located outside the EU or Germany.

In addition to the special requirements of personal data, large amounts of data, e.g. in the context of simulations or gene sequencing, represent a special requirement for research data management. If you work with such large data, please contact the Regional Computing Centre early to clarify your needs.

Ideally, data is stored in discipline-specific repositories beyond the duration of the project. Further information on repositories can be found here.