A five-safes approach to a secure and scalable genomics data repository

Summary: Genomic researchers increasingly utilize commercial cloud service providers (CSPs) to manage data and analytics needs. CSPs allow researchers to grow Information Technology (IT) infrastructure on demand to overcome bottlenecks when combining large datasets. However, without adequate security controls, the risk of unauthorized access may be higher for data stored on the cloud. Additionally, regulators are mandating data access patterns and specific security protocols for the storage and use of genomic data. While CSP provides tools for security and regulatory compliance, building the necessary controls required for cloud solutions is not trivial. Research Assets Provisioning and Tracking Online Repository (RAPTOR) by the Genome Institute of Singapore is a cloud-native genomics data repository and analytics platform that implements a “five-safes” framework to provide security and governance controls to data contributors and users, leveraging CSP for sharing and analysis of genomic datasets without the risk of security breaches or running afoul of regulations.