Guaranteeing the security of your data is a fundamental pillar of Coscine and the technical realization has long been part of the core business at the IT Center of RWTH Aachen University. The security of data storage via the Research Data Storage (RDS) goes beyond the usual (institute-based) storage options on file servers.
Research Data Storage (RDS)
The RDS is operated by a consortium of universities (RWTH Aachen, University of Cologne, University of Duisburg-Essen, Ruhr University Bochum and Technical University Dortmund). The RDS is based on modern object store technology and is protected against loss by site-redundant storage. Data is stored redundantly at at least 3 locations in NRW, so that a total failure of a data center can be compensated. At the local sites, data security is ensured via erasure coding. The associated metadata in Coscine is stored locally according to similar standards, protected against unauthorized access and backed up.
External Resources
The security of data in resources from external systems (e.g. Linked Data, GitLab or Sciebo) remains in the hands of the respective operators. Therefore, it is recommended to rely on trustworthy and established services such as Sciebo or GitLab. As with the RDS resources, the associated metadata in Coscine is stored locally, protected from unauthorized access and backed up.
Data access security
Regarding data access security, Coscine uses state of the art security technologies to protect your data and transmission to end devices is SSL encrypted. The security of communication with the various types of resources is also guaranteed in this way. All systems are operated according to BSI basic protection. As a university consortium, there is also no interest in passing on the data of its own researchers.
