An innovative new service at Indiana University aims to help researchers overcome common challenges in their work: staying compliant and keeping data safe. Often, the very nature of collaborative research makes the data vulnerable to outside influences.
SecureMyResearch provides researchers with consulting and resources to help them protect research data and comply with cybersecurity requirements in grants, contracts, and data use agreements. The service aims to reduce the cybersecurity and compliance burden, letting researchers do what they do best—world-class research.
SecureMyResearch aims to reduce the cybersecurity and compliance burden, letting researchers do what they do best—world-class research.
SecureMyResearch offers services that help conduct research securely, whether working with regulated or unregulated data, such as:
- A one-stop, self-service resource (known as the ‘cookbook’) that provides recipes for common research use cases that have security and compliance baked in
- One-on-one consulting
- Advocacy, a vehicle to provide researcher feedback to the appropriate stakeholders
The cookbook offers information and recipes (step-by-step directions) developed by IU technology and cybersecurity experts using proven ingredients that have security baked in. Many of the ‘recipes’ are also pre-approved for certain types of critical data, for instance, HIPAA protected health information (PHI). While the cookbook may have some directions specific to IU, most are general use case scenarios that apply to many researchers.
SecureMyResearch is a joint initiative by Indiana University’s Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research (CACR), Information Security in the Office of Vice President for Information Technology (OVPIT), and UITS Research Technologies, and supported by the Office of the Vice President for Research and the Office of the Vice President for Information Technology.
