Secure Computing Environment
Introduction
The Secure Computing Environment (SCE) provides researchers with a platform that mitigates the risks of working with electronic personal health information (ePHI) and other types of high risk data that are subject to regulatory or compliance requirements. SCE eases the burden on the researcher of having to configure and assure that their computational work environment has been configured with the appropriate security controls needed to minimize the risk of exposing high risk data. These data include, but are not limited to: HIPAA, FERPA NIST 800-171, Personal Information Protection Act of Illinois and other grant specific regulations.
SCE is a secure virtual machine (VM) service. We provide on-campus VMs as well as VMs hosted on the Azure Cloud. ACER staff provides services for resource sizing, user configuration, and software installation. Common uses for SCE include web servers, database servers, and computation configurations ranging from one virtual machine to multiple connected machines.
Recent clients include the Center for Clinical and Translational Science (CCTS) and the UIC Cancer Center.
SCE Quick Comparison
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On-premises SCE
– Static monthly cost
– fulfills grants and contracts which require local storage and/or computational resources
– Provides sufficient security for HIPAA, FERPA and Personal Information Protection Act of Illinois requirements. -
Azure SCE
– Flexible pay-per-hour pricing
– Offers higher level of security with NIST 800-171 compliance, in addition to HIPAA, FERPA, and Personal Information Protection Act of Illinois
– Provides access to GPU-accelerated resources
