Data storage and backups

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• Data security
• Processing personal data
• Data storage

Data security

You should safeguard your data from threats such as unauthorised people gaining access or data degradation. Data security is an important consideration even when research data does not contain personal data or other sensitive data.

Computer systems security is implemented with password protection and controlled access (such as ‘no access’, ‘read only’, ‘read and write’ or ‘administrator-only’ permission). Physical security is required to control access to where the data is stored. To avoid accidentally deleting or corrupting data, choose a storage strategy with regular backups of your data.

• Guidelines on information security at Lund University (PDF, 457 kB, new tab)
• Information security on the Staff Pages
• Guide to protecting research data on the Swedish National Data Service (SND) website

Processing personal data

Personal data is any information relating to an identified or identifiable living individual. It includes, for example:

• Name
• Personal identity number
• Email address
• Address

Some personal data is categorised as sensitive, for example:

• Racial or ethnic origin
• Political opinions
• Health data
• Genetic data

All processing of personal data is regulated by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The processing of sensitive personal data requires approval from an independent ethical review board. By processing of personal data is meant everything from collection, registration, handling, and storage to disclosure, dissemination, and deletion.

Any material that contains sensitive data must be stored securely. Examples of sensitive personal data are data gathered in interviews (audio files and transcripts) or questionnaire responses, with associated consent forms. The material may need to be stored in a security container or on a secure server.

For questions about the processing of personal data, contact the Lund University data protection officer (dataskyddsombud [at] lu [dot] se).

Guidelines on the registration of personal data processing for research on the Staff Pages

Data storage

Research data containing no personal data or other sensitive data

For data with no personal data or other sensitive data, you can use the standard servers operated and backed up by Division of IT, Lund University’s own IT provider.

To share your data you can use Lund University’s cloud service LU Box or Microsoft OneDrive, with which Lund University has an agreement. Since Lund University is a public authority, it must have access to, and control over, all its information. This is possible with these two cloud service providers, provided that you log in using your Lucat identity.

IT services on the internal IT website (Swedish only)

Contact information for Division of IT – staff.lu.se

If your research requires large datasets and similarly large storage services and technical computing, you can use Lund University’s research infrastructure LUNARC. LUNARC provides large-scale computational and storage resources.

LUNARC website

Research data containing personal data or other sensitive data

Ensure that unauthorised people cannot access personal data or other sensitive data by storing them securely, for example in a locked security container or on a secure server.

Personal data and other sensitive data may not be stored using cloud services as it is impossible to guarantee the data will be secure. Instead, use LUSEC, Lund University’s platform for storing, managing, analysing, and sharing personal data and other sensitive data securely. Access to LUSEC can be acquired from the Faculty of Medicine.

LUSEC on the Faculty of Medicine internal website

If your research requires large datasets that contains personal data and other sensitive data, and similarly large storage services and technical computing, you can use the research infrastructure UPPMAX (Uppsala Multidisciplinary Centre for Advanced Computational Science), which provides large-scale resources computational and storage resources for sensitive data. UPPMAX is part of the national research infrastructure SNIC (Swedish National Infrastructure for Computing). UPPMAX and SNIC can be used by researchers at any Swedish university.

Research infrastructure UPPMAX – uu.se

SNIC national research infrastructure for computing – snic.se