As part of your research or job role you may need to share or store personal, confidential or sensitive data. If the University or Blavatnik School of Government is the data owner, or if data has been passed to the University under contract, we as users of University services are bound to manage this data in a safe and secure manner.
Members of research projects may have undertaken additional commitments and controls on the way that research data is stored and transmitted. Strong file encryption provides high level of security allowing transmission of protected data using insecure or public networks.
Most modern computer operating systems include applications which can be used to securely encrypt files and data prior to being shared by using less secure transmission methods, for example email, usb memory stick or cloud storage. However, most built-in encryption tools are not inter-operable with across platforms.
For example, a file encrypted with Microsoft's BitLocker technology on Windows cannot be decrypted using MacOS Disk Utility tool, and vice versa.
As a rule of thumb, if you know that the you and the people you need to securely share data with are also using the same operating system, we would recommend using the built-in tools.
If however, you are sharing data people which use an alternative operating system, we recommend using tools which support the open source encrypted 7z format using strong AES-256 encryption to secure your data. '7zip' for the Windows Platform, 'Keka' for macOS and 'p7zip' for Linux based systems all support 7z compression and encryption.
Installing and using Keka for Orchard managed macOS computers
Installing and using Keka for unmanaged macOS computers
Installing and using 7zip for Windows computers
Creating and managing encryption keys
If you are unable to resolve your query or support issue you can request help in the following ways:
All technical issues or queries are supported by the ICT Service Desk, please email ictservice@bsg.ox.ac.uk to log your request.
