HPC Data Protection#
Note
In the following ‘personal data’ means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘data subject’); an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person; (Art. 4 GDPR).
The data storage in our HPC clusters is exclusively intended for data used as input or resulting as output of computations carried out by the user. It is strictly forbidden to store any personal data in our systems. The only exception are research projects involving personal data as described below.
Researchers working with personal data#
Researchers handling datasets containing personal data have to file their research into the register of processing activities of their research institution. Please contact your Data Protection Officer (DPO) for more information.
Former users#
Users will lose access to most services of VUB-HPC as soon as they are no longer registered as students or staff of VUB. This usually happens on the closing date of the student program or employment contract with VUB.
your VSC account page
login to the HPC cluster from abroad, either through the VSC HPC firewall or the VPN of VUB
the notebook platform on the HPC
The VSC account of former users is disabled 7 days after they are no longer registered as students or staff of VUB. At this point, the remaining services of VUB-HPC will become inaccessible:
login to HPC clusters through SSH
job submission to HPC clusters
Note
Former users might still be able to access some university services through their VUB account even after loosing their student or staff status.
Data retention#
Different data retention policies apply depending on the type of storage holding the data:
- Personal partitions:
$VSC_HOME
,$VSC_DATA
,$VSC_SCRATCH
All your data will be kept at least for 6 months after the closure of your VSC account.
- Personal partitions:
- Virtual organization:
$VSC_DATA_VO_USER
,$VSC_SCRATCH_VO_USER
All data in your VO will be kept for as long as the VO is operational. Data in VOs belongs to the research group of the VO and hence, the head of the unit is the responsible to manage that data.
- Virtual organization: