More Thoughts on Cyber Safety and NIH-Funded Research

  October is National Cybersecurity Awareness Month. In recognition, we are reminding our extramural research community about the importance of prioritizing cybersafety across all functions of your organization and understanding how important it is to practice cyber-safe behaviors every day. As we have discussed in previous posts here and here, our current virtual environment makes it more important than ever that we stay vigilant and maintain strong cybersecurity protocols.   In this post, we would like to remind you of some of the important cybersecurity policies that apply to your NIH-supported research. These policies are designed to protect not only the NIH, but also you, your coworkers, your study participants, your institution, and your research. As healthcare and research institutions continue to face mounting threats from cyberattacks, it’s important that we all not only know how to protect sensitive information, but also make a personal commitment to keeping data safe.   When institutions like yours accept NIH awards, you also accept responsibility for protecting sensitive and confidential data as part of proper stewardship of federally funded research [Section 2.3.12 of the NIH Grants Policy Statement (GPS)]. This means, in part, that: You must not house sensitive and confidential information about NIH-supported work on portable electronic devices. Data must be encrypted. Your institution must use proper controls to limit access to personally iden...
Source: NIH Extramural Nexus - Category: Research Authors: Tags: blog Open Mike cybersecurity Source Type: funding