Secure, reliable and dynamic access to distributed clinical data

An abundance of statistical and scientific data exists in the area of clinical and epidemiological studies. Much of this data is distributed across regional, national and international boundaries with different policies on access and usage, and a multitude of different schemata for the data often complicated by the variety of supporting clinical coding schemes. This prevents the wide scale collation and analysis of such data as is often needed to infer clinical outcomes and to determine the often moderate effect of drugs. Through grid technologies it is possible to overcome the barriers introduced by distribution of heterogeneous data and services. However reliability, dynamicity and fine-grained security are essential in this domain, and are not typically offered by current grids. The MRC funded VOTES project (Virtual Organisations for Trials and Epidemiological Studies) has implemented a prototype infrastructure specifically designed to meet these challenges. This paper describes this on-going implementation effort and the lessons learned in building grid frameworks for and within a clinical environment

Grid infrastructures supporting paediatric endocrinology across Europe

Paediatric endocrinology is a highly specialised area of clinical medicine with many experts with specific knowledge distributed over a wide geographical area. The European Society for Paediatric Endocrinology (ESPE) is an example of such a body of experts that require regular collaboration and sharing of data and knowledge. This paper describes work, developed as a corollary to the VOTES project [1] and implementing similar architectures, to provide a data grid that allows information to be efficiently distributed between collaborating partners, and also allows wide-scale analyses to be run over the entire data-set, which necessarily involves crossing domain boundaries and negotiating data access between administrations that only trust each other to a limited degree

Integrated Border Management at the EU Level. CEPS Working Documents No. 227, 1 August 2005

In times marked by trends as diverse as economic globalisation, international migration as well as fear of terrorism and organised crime, the efficient handling of borders has become an issue of political priority, in the EU and across the world. Modern, economy-oriented states have to rely on a flourishing trade and offer a comfortable degree of security to their citizens. The formula commonly chosen in combining these two objectives is that of ‘integrated border management’, which represents the delicate attempt to marry security concerns with trade facilitation. If the implementation of this innovative approach is already proving to be a challenge to well-established nation states, it becomes a genuine balancing act for an incomplete federation such as the EU, with its sensitive mix of a single external border and 25 separate legal/administrative systems. This working paper seeks to illustrate the difficulties encountered by the EU and develop solutions that should firmly go into the direction of a coherent, communitarian approach in border management, such as that sketched out by the recent Council Regulation No. 2007/2004 establishing the European Border Agency known as FRONTEX

A Taxonomy of Data Grids for Distributed Data Sharing, Management and Processing

Data Grids have been adopted as the platform for scientific communities that need to share, access, transport, process and manage large data collections distributed worldwide. They combine high-end computing technologies with high-performance networking and wide-area storage management techniques. In this paper, we discuss the key concepts behind Data Grids and compare them with other data sharing and distribution paradigms such as content delivery networks, peer-to-peer networks and distributed databases. We then provide comprehensive taxonomies that cover various aspects of architecture, data transportation, data replication and resource allocation and scheduling. Finally, we map the proposed taxonomy to various Data Grid systems not only to validate the taxonomy but also to identify areas for future exploration. Through this taxonomy, we aim to categorise existing systems to better understand their goals and their methodology. This would help evaluate their applicability for solving similar problems. This taxonomy also provides a "gap analysis" of this area through which researchers can potentially identify new issues for investigation. Finally, we hope that the proposed taxonomy and mapping also helps to provide an easy way for new practitioners to understand this complex area of research.Comment: 46 pages, 16 figures, Technical Repor

Cyber insurance of information systems: Security and privacy cyber insurance contracts for ICT and helathcare organizations

Nowadays, more-and-more aspects of our daily activities are digitalized. Data and assets in the cyber-space, both for individuals and organizations, must be safeguarded. Thus, the insurance sector must face the challenge of digital transformation in the 5G era with the right set of tools. In this paper, we present CyberSure-an insurance framework for information systems. CyberSure investigates the interplay between certification, risk management, and insurance of cyber processes. It promotes continuous monitoring as the new building block for cyber insurance in order to overcome the current obstacles of identifying in real-time contractual violations by the insured party and receiving early warning notifications prior the violation. Lightweight monitoring modules capture the status of the operating components and send data to the CyberSure backend system which performs the core decision making. Therefore, an insured system is certified dynamically, with the risk and insurance perspectives being evaluated at runtime as the system operation evolves. As new data become available, the risk management and the insurance policies are adjusted and fine-tuned. When an incident occurs, the insurance company possesses adequate information to assess the situation fast, estimate accurately the level of a potential loss, and decrease the required period for compensating the insured customer. The framework is applied in the ICT and healthcare domains, assessing the system of medium-size organizations. GDPR implications are also considered with the overall setting being effective and scalable