Keeping data safe

HASP isn’t just about collecting data – our team are focused on using it responsibly and ethically.

We maintain rigorous ethical standards to protect the privacy of individuals, address data bias and ensure that research teams have the expertise to deliver high-impact work.

The Five Safes Framework

We adhere to the Five Safes framework to keep your data safe.

Devised by the Office for National Statistics and other providers, the Five Safes Safe people, safe projects, safe settings, safe data, safe outputs serves as best practice in data protection while also balancing requirements for open science and transparency.

Click the headings below to find out more about each safe

▶︎Safe people

Our researchers come from universities across the UK and are at the forefront of their field of study.

Whilst open data are available to all registered users, those wishing to use safeguarded or secure data must be registered users who meet the following criteria.

To be considered Safe people, researchers must:

demonstrate that they have the technical skills to use the data, either through academic qualifications or practical research experience;
complete the Safe Researcher Training course and pass the assessment at the end;
agree to their details being published on our website;
sign an agreement promising to protect the confidentiality of data at all times.

▶︎Safe projects

In addition to researcher registration and training, users must also submit a project proposal to request access to the specific datasets they need.

Project proposals are reviewed by a panel (consisting of the HASP leadership team, a relevant independent academic and the data owner) to ensure that the proposed use is an appropriate and ethical use of the data, that it will deliver clear public benefits and that the user will publish their results to enable use, scrutiny and further research.

▶︎Safe settings

HASP Safeguarded and Secure operate within the Leeds Analytic Secure Environment for Research (LASER) a cloud-based Trusted Research Environment (TRE) A secure environment for researchers to store, handle, process and analyse sensitive and confidential data that is managed and maintained by the University of Leeds.

LASER, which has ISO27001 and NHS Data Security and Protection Toolkit accreditations, provides a secure environment for researchers to store, handle, process and analyse sensitive and confidential data.

▶︎Safe data

We work with data owners to balance the privacy and utility requirements of data sets. This means that we only receive the safest data that meets user requirements.

For occasions where some form of de-identification is required, we are supported by a specialist team from LASER who perform all necessary steps within a safe walled Trusted Research Environment (TRE) to ensure that personally identifiable data does not enter the service.

▶︎Safe outputs

Users working with safeguarded and secure data cannot take raw data outside of their designated TRE.

Instead, specialists from HASP and LASER review prepared outputs (e.g tables, graphs, derived statistics) to ensure that results are relevant to the researchers approved project and do not contain any information that would allow any person, household, business or other sensitive entity to be identified.

The leadership team have many years of experience working at the interface between academia and industry, negotiating access to data, developing secure data infrastructure and co-designing research that provides actionable insight. We are domain area experts with a passion for improving the health and sustainability of places and a track record of delivering insight from smart data.

— Professor Nik Lomax