What is Secure Data Environment (SDE) and How it Works?

Machines with data can only be accessed behind a VPN. Researchers do all their research there. We are blocking downloading the data following already established government biobanking practices used by The UK BioBank, the biggest biobank in the world, and the NHS Secure Research Environment. This architecture developed and used by governments over the last 10+ years is a huge inspiration for us.

Access is still a lot; you must be mindful that researchers do have access to your data. They can try to remember it. Remembering hundreds of people's genomes is close to impossible. Still, after a few weeks of work on this data, they may start to recall more specific medical histories in small sample studies. Therefore, we are a proxy for the benefits you get whenever possible, so they never learn your identity. Each Tier in each research mentions whether they will need to know your identity at any point to provide you with promised benefits and rewards. They can try to take screenshots of it (even though we will provide solutions to monitor and block such activities immediately).

How it works at NHS:

We are doing identity verification (KYC) on every person on the platform and carrying extra checks on each researcher. Still, they do have access to data at the end of the day, as that's the point of being able to do research. Be mindful of whose research you are consenting to join.

Many of our cybersecurity solutions will be designed to protect participants and researchers from themselves and potential liability if they get hacked. If we notice any suspicious activity on any researcher's account, our system can freeze the account instantly.

Researchers have all tools preinstalled locally. Sending data outside the secure environment is blocked and disabled. We don't allow AI use that involves sending data on the network. We cooperate with AI solutions for closed networks, such as Solo.

Is this 100% secure?

Cybersecurity is a never-ending arms race! Companies' and governments' data is leaked all the time. Anyone promising you 100% security is either ignorant of the cybersecurity field or lies to you. It's a never-ending cat-and-mouse game.

That said, our CEO's background is cybersecurity work at national critical infrastructure projects, running non-profit hackerspaces, and ethical hacktivism culture. What we can promise is that we take this extremely seriously and are proud to be paranoid about it.