Trusted Research Environments: Analysis of Characteristics and Data Availability

Abstract

Trusted Research Environments (TREs) enable the analysis of sensitive data under strict security assertions that protect the data with technical, organizational, and legal measures from (accidentally) being leaked outside the facility. While many TREs exist in Europe, little information is available publicly on the architecture and descriptions of their building blocks and their slight technical variations. To highlight on these problems, an overview of the existing, publicly described TREs and a bibliography linking to the system description are provided. Their technical characteristics, especially in commonalities and variations, are analysed, and insight is provided into their data type characteristics and availability. The literature study shows that 47 TREs worldwide provide access to sensitive data, of which two-thirds provide data predominantly via secure remote access. Statistical offices (SOs) make the majority of sensitive data records included in this study available.