Security and Privacy in Life Sciences Data

Nowadays, there are over a thousand different life science databases with hundreds of gigabytes of content. Such databases are distributed over the web and have high degrees of heterogeneity and different levels of quality. Typically, research in life sciences requires the combination of various sources of data and processing by bioinformatics tools deployed on powerful and efficient platforms for patterns, similarities, and unusual occurrences to be observed. Therefore, sharing of data among institutions and researchers is essential for life sciences. However, this gives rise to many security and privacy issues that need to be addressed at the lowest level, that of data.

The scope of this project is to provide methods for ensuring privacy and security custom-tailored to real-world life sciences applications. To achieve this, competence in both life sciences applications as well as data security and privacy methods must be attained. Upon conclusion of the project, the researcher will have acquired sufficient expertise in order to: (i) disseminate knowledge about the security and privacy implications to life sciences researchers; and (ii) provide with real-world case studies and detailed security and privacy requirements to data management researchers.