Cloud enclave for academic research
Streamlining security and compliance at your institution
August 2021
Contents
Introduction........................................................................................................ 3
1. Assess where you are today........................................................................ 4
Work directly with researchers to identify challenges............................................................................... 4
Identify existing compliance gaps.................................................................................................................... 4
2. Establish a comprehensive plan................................................................ 6
Engage key stakeholders and partners.......................................................................................................... 6
Find the right cloud vendor to meet your specific needs......................................................................... 7
3. Connect to the cloud.................................................................................... 8
Establish IT as a resource.................................................................................................................................... 8
Get started with the cloud.................................................................................................................................. 9
4. Provide training and support to early adopters...................................10
Engage researchers of all technical backgrounds..................................................................................... 10
Ease researchers onto the cloud.................................................................................................................... 10
5. Establish your new compliance process................................................. 11
Target key guidelines to get more grants ................................................................................................... 11
Capitalize on direct billing and automated update cadences............................................................... 11
Conclusion..........................................................................................................12
Cloud Enclave for Academic Research // 2
Introduction
Ensuring security and compliance in academic research is a challenging and expensive process,
especially when on-premises systems are involved. With research teams using standalone systems,
many institutions are stuck traversing the compliance process multiple times for each new grant,
award or sponsored research effort. It can take weeks or even months to establish a compliant system before moving forward with the sponsored research effort. Even research using cloud resources doesn't always meet the stringent security and compliance standards required by such agreements.
Like many institutions, Kansas State University was experiencing these challenges. Building one-off compliant systems for every newly sponsored research effort was a lengthy and cost-prohibitive process, and the resulting systems were not scalable. K-State needed an enterprise solution,
something to streamline the process for both research teams and IT.
K-State worked with Microsoft to overcome these obstacles by developing the Research Information
Security Enclave, or RISE, a powerful cloud-based research system. The enclave offers highly secure cloud resources to researchers through a familiar desktop interface, dramatically streamlining the compliance process.
The help from Microsoft has run the gamut, said Dan Sewell, senior computer/systems specialist and cloud architect at K-State. Having face-to-face time with cloud solution architects has been great,
and that's been reinforced by weekly webinars and a higher education Microsoft Teams group. It's all helped strengthen our partnership.
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