Data security
Data security is a critical aspect of research data management, ensuring that sensitive information is protected from unauthorized access, loss, or corruption. It involves implementing measures to safeguard data throughout its lifecycle, from collection and storage to sharing and archiving.
TU Delft implements robust authentication and authorization mechanisms, such as strong passwords and two-factor authentication, to restrict data access only to approved individuals and systems.
Core principles of research data security
Key principles include:
Availability: Ensuring that authorized users can access the data and associated systems when needed for their research activities.
Confidentiality: Ensuring that data is accessible only to individuals who are explicitly authorized to view or use it.
Integrity: Maintaining the accuracy, completeness, and consistency of data throughout its entire lifecycle, preventing unauthorized modification. Regularly backing up data to prevent loss due to accidental deletion, hardware failure, or cyberattacks, and having a recovery plan in place to restore data in case of incidents.
Verifying data integrity
A checksum is a small-sized block of data derived from another block of digital data. By comparing the checksum of a file you have downloaded, backed-up, or transferred with the one provided by the source, you can verify if the file is an exact and untampered copy.
Step 1: Obtain an original checksum
Before you can verify a file, you need an original checksum value. This is typically provided by a website or source from where you downloaded the file. It could also have been generated by yourself from Step 2. It usually is a long string of alphanumeric characters and is often labeled as MD5, SHA-1, or SHA-256.
For example, you might see something like this on a download page:
SHA-256: e3b0c44298fc1c149afbf4c8996fb92427ae41e4649b934ca495991b7852b855
Step 2: Generate a checksum for your file
You can use different command-line tools to calculate the checksum of the file you have downloaded, transferred or backed-up.
Open PowerShell (press Win + X and select “PowerShell”).
Use the Get-FileHash command. By default, it uses SHA-256.
Get-FileHash C:\path\to\your\fileTo use a different algorithm like MD5, specify it:
Get-FileHash C:\path\to\your\file -Algorithm MD5Open your terminal (you can find it in Applications > Utilities).
For SHA-256, use the shasum -a 256 command:
shasum -a 256 /path/to/your/fileFor MD5, use the md5 command:
md5 /path/to/your/fileOpen your terminal.
For SHA-256, use the sha256sum command:
sha256sum /path/to/your/fileFor MD5, use the md5sum command:
md5sum /path/to/your/fileStep 3: Compare the checksums
Finally, compare the checksum you generated in Step 2 with the original checksum from Step 1. There might be cases where you need to do Step 2 in two different systems, such as a local machine and a remote server.
If they match exactly, your file is a perfect copy.
If they do not match, the file was likely corrupted during download or has been tampered with. You should delete the file and download it again.
Other considerations
Our Data privacy guide has a list of TU Delft privacy related resources that should be helpful if you are working with highly sensitive data, such as personal information, health data, or copyrighted material.