FIVE SAFES

My name is Richard Welpton, I'm currently a Senior Data Manager at The Health Foundation. I began my career at the then Virtual Microdata Laboratory (now called the Secure Research Service) at the Office for National Statistics... What are sensitive data? By this, we refer to data about individual people or organisations (microdata) collected in confidence. The data may have been de identified, I.e. stripped of information that would immediately identify each observation, such as name or address, but there is still potential for deidentification using a combination of the detailed data about each observation... The Five Safes has been around for a while, in operation since about 2006. Much of data governance or information governance concentrates on the IT aspects of data security. But we know that providing access to sensitive data involves a lot more than that. Assuming that data are accessed in a technically secure environment, we also have to consider a few other aspects.

Also known as: The Five Safes