Security framework for protected data allows researchers to tap Oak Ridge supercomputers
CITADEL opens up new opportunities for big data researchers who previously could not access Summit, the nation’s most powerful scientific supercomputer, because of privacy rules.
A new framework of security protocols will allow researchers to tap into the supercomputers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s National Center for Computational Sciences (NCCS) for projects using protected data.
Called CITADEL, the framework features new security controls for handling large datasets containing private or health information as well as data protected by Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and the International Traffic in Arms Regulations. This means researchers will soon be able to take advantage of Summit supercomputer and the upcoming Frontier exascale system for data processing.
CITADEL was developed from a framework originally built for big data analysis of health information for the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Million Veteran Program, the research program that analyzes veterans’ health, lifestyle and military background information to understand how genes affect health and illness.
The new framework allows researchers to comply with the Federal Information Security Management Act as they work with highly protected data on supercomputers, according to NCCS Chief Data Architect J. “Robert” Michael. “With CITADEL, we’re utilizing an encrypted parallel file system that improves both performance and security, ensuring that we’re doing this in compliance with all of the regulations that are in place to protect this data.”
“The challenge with health data is that to do anything with it, you have huge privacy concerns,” said Jeremy Cohen, a program manager for the VA and CMS at NCCS’s Scalable Protected Data Facilities. “So if you’re going to house this data, you have to treat the system as you would a secure environment in terms of the securities and policies that are wrapped around it -- who gets access to the data, what they do with the data, and what can and cannot be moved out of that environment.”
New administrative processes were also established to ensure private data could not be accessed by other researchers or used by other projects. HIPAA-protected data for a project sponsored by the VA, for example, is kept separate from HIPAA-protected data for a project sponsored by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, ORNL officials said.