Securely sharing Swiss Research - UNIL's Solution

Fostering research collaboration with a compliant & convenient platform

The University of Lausanne, a higher teaching and research institution, was looking for a solution to facilitate secure internal and external scientific collaboration. Due to the nature of their regulated research data, Swiss data location and audit capabilities were crucial. They opted for Tresorit, as it allows them to create secure data rooms, compartmentalized secure online repositories used to store, manage, and share sensitive information. This allows scientists in different projects to collaborate with research fellows worldwide, all while ensuring compliance.

The Company: Situated on the shores of Lake Geneva, the University of Lausanne (UNIL) provides an inspiring home for appr. 17,000 students and a staff of 3,800, among them around 550 Full and Associate Professors – not just thanks to its well-equipped facilities, but also to its interdisciplinary approach.

Focusing on human and social sciences, life sciences and medicine, and environmental sciences, UNIL nurtures scientific collaboration on a global scale.

Challenges: UNIL researchers manage a broad spectrum of highly sensitive personal and research information, ranging from research participants’ political interests, religion, sexual orientation to health data. This type of data requires data processors to ensure data protection by default.

Also, within the bounds of their international partnerships, they often collaborate on sensitive information. Therefore, while UNIL sought a tool to serve less IT-savvy scientists, state-of-the-art security was essential to ensure data privacy in cross-border collaboration.

Another demanding regulatory aspect concerns research data involving human subjects: UNIL had to adhere to the Swiss Human Research Law, which mandates the traceability and auditability of sensitive research data.

On top of that, Yassine Ghennai, Information Security Engineer at Uni Lausanne faced a concerning situation. Their encryption service provider at that time, Boxcryptor, announced its acquisition by the American mainstream provider Dropbox.

Given the fragmented and permissive data privacy landscape in America, it became clear to Yassine that they needed to transition away from Boxcryptor. Not to mention that the manual encryption provided by Boxcryptor often made data handling cumbersome and time-consuming.

Search for a solution: Yassine and his team had thoroughly evaluated different solutions. Important requirements were an intuitive interface combined with robust compliance and security capabilities. Based on UNIL's list of requirements, it was logical to choose a provider that uniquely balances security and usability within one platform. After a successful trial, Tresorit emerged as the standout choice with a number of benefits.

Tresorit has enabled UNIL to establish secure data rooms for both internal and external use. “When there is an international project, we give a Tresorit account to the external researchers to make collaboration safe and easy”- Yassine explains.

He emphasizes another crucial advantage of Tresorit: “The audit capacity was one of the main capabilities when choosing Tresorit. It allows us to go back to the original files and maintain audit logs. We can now see what is happening to our data throughout its entire lifecycle as it is required by law and ethical committees. This gives us a great peace of mind.”

With data rooms that can be deployed in a few clicks and customized on a project-by-project base, storing and sharing data is a no-brainer now with Tresorit. End-to-end encryption ensures reliable protection, allowing researchers to focus more on scientific work.

Implementation & Results: Today, UNIL’s researchers can securely exchange research data and findings with Tresorit - not only within departments but also with external research fellows. With minimal need for training, researchers can instantly create data rooms and organize research data in a single location.

As part of their two-layer model, Tresorit is exclusively used for research collaboration alongside their on-premises version for large-scale data storage.

By using Tresorit as a secure partner data room, they can manage information in line with the disciplinary and regulatory standards. Thus, they can rest assured that study participants’ sensitive information, medical research data, and the university’s intellectual property are protected with the highest level of security at all times.

The authority to create data rooms, invite participants, and monitor document activity lies solely with the research head. While external collaborators are encouraged to contribute and access materials, their ability to share links is disabled for security reasons.

“The main author, known as the Principal Investigator (PI), creates directories and invites participants. Using Tresorit, we can easily manage users and access rights, making sure we are compliant,” explains Yassine.

Tresorit has not just helped UNIL to achieve compliant data management but has also introduced structure and transparency to research practices institution-wide and beyond. This ultimately enhances collaboration with internal and external partners, paving the way for future international projects.

Yet, according to Yassine, an exceptional benefit of adopting the Swiss encryption provider was the set of control features that make audit-readiness a piece of cake. With downloadable audit trails and file versioning, they can easily monitor any changes made to data and be well-prepared for audits.

On top of that, the adoption of Tresorit by Uni Lausanne has ushered in a radically improved user experience compared to Boxcryptor’s manual security mechanism. End-to-end encryption working under the hood allows researchers to focus on their work rather than grappling with technical intricacies.

Feedback and lessons learned: “The Swiss Human Research Law’s requirement to protect sensitive data placed high pressure on us. With Boxcryptor’s takeover by Dropbox, the need to find a compliant solution became even more urgent. Opting for Tresorit was the safest way for us. On top of that, it has also offered a better user experience”, concludes Yassine.

Conclusion: Using Tresorit as a partner data room has helped UNIL research community simplify collaboration with inside and outside contributors without trading off compliance or security. This not only revitalizes cross-border research partnerships but also enhances efficiency.

With a user-friendly and secure by design platform, they can focus now on the work that matters - analyzing and interpreting research data, free from system constraints or concerns about compliance risks.