Data sharing with partners

Some research projects involve more than one partner organisation. At VU Amsterdam, there are storage solutions that work well for data sharing, like Research Drive and Yoda.

If you have general questions about how to protect your data when transporting or transferring it, or if you need encrypted hardware, you can contact the IT Service Desk. In the event of complex questions, for which you need tailored support, the IT Relationship Manager can connect you to IT colleagues, to set up an information security plan.

If you are working with personal data, then the GDPR requires that all parties working with the data sign a joint controller agreement. You can ask your Privacy Champion for advice about this. For multi-centre clinical research, a Clinical Trial Agreement is recommended.

Data protection

Data protection refers to mitigating risks that could arise from either the loss or corruption of your data. It also concerns privacy risks for the participants, and sensitive or commercially interesting data being accessed by unauthorised parties. Data breaches cannot only damage a research project, but also the reputation of the entire University.

VU Amsterdam offers a Data Classification tool to perform a basic assessment of risks related to the use of data in your research project. This assessment results in guidance on further steps to take. Once you have an idea about the risks, you can decide what measures to take to secure the data protection.

Technical implementation

IT can help you with technical implementations for data management.

This will be the next step after using the data classification tools and getting in touch with IT about necessary solutions.