SIF UI

There's no space quota as such on the SIF storage. Anything within a few terabytes should be fine. We suggest that you just have a word with us if you want to store more than that.

If you want to store non-sensitive data sets - especially big ones - we recommend instead doing so on ERDA.

All user data on SIF is automatically replicated over multiple disks with RAID technology. We additionally run automatic nightly backup of all SIF system and user data to a remote location.

SIF relies on the same mature open source software stack used in ERDA, but with a number of additional security enhancements and with all potentially less secure features disabled. E.g. it does not come with direct data export and share links to reduce the risk of data leaks and avoid anonymous access of any kind. SIF enforces mandatory 2-factor authentication for all access using the TOTP industry standard for one-time passwords generated on your smart phone or tablet. In effect this makes it a lot harder to obtain unauthorized access even for an attacker who should somehow get hold of your password. Data on SIF can generally only be accessed through security-hardened protocols and user data is only ever stored to disk in encrypted form. That is, all data access and storage rely on strong encryption standards. Additionally SIF strictly separates data on a per-project basis to help users avoid leaking sensitive data by mistake.

User data is only ever stored on UCPH premises, more precisely in the HPC Center server rooms with physical access control. Management-wise SIF also comes with even tighter regulation, where only a select few administrators can obtain access to decrypted user data, and always only after explicit permission from a superior.

For upload of an entire folder structure, you can use the efficient file/folder handling described in the Efficient Data Access sections of the user guide. That makes SIF appear like a network drive, so that you can use your local file manager to copy entire folders to SIF.

Currently SIF web access is limited to only upload/download of individual files. We may decide to add pack/unpack support later, like it is the case on ERDA.

SIF prevents certain characters like "< > { | } * ? [ ]" in file names. You may already have run into similar limitations when naming files on your own PC or devices. In order to provide a secure and consistent experience across different platforms, web and advanced interfaces SIF prohibits those and some more that are known to cause problems. Either because they are so-called control characters with a special potentially dangerous meaning on the storage systems or because they are known to interfere with the web interfacing and presentation. We are continuously evaluating the need for allowing more exotic characters but always with focus on not breaking existing interfaces and backends. Feel free to contact us about the possibility of allowing any additional characters that you may miss.

For security reasons we generally avoid storing passwords in our systems and only save a one-way derived hash value. Therefore we cannot recover passwords, but we do allow you to change it.

If you are an employee or student at KU/UCPH you typically log in to SIF web through the UCPH OpenID authentication service. It is linked to the central UCPH user database and therefore employs your usual UCPH credentials from e.g. KU Mail and KU Net (usernames are on the form abc123). If you forgot your KU/UCPH password or e.g. it expired you need to go through UCPH password change procedures or get in touch with UCPH IT Support.

If you are an external user on SIF you can always use the External user sign up button again to renew access and/or change your main SIF password. Just fill the sign up form as usual including your particular ID fields, the mandatory name and email of your UCPH contact and a note that you want to change password in the Comment field.

The other SIF services like SFTP and WebDAVS rely on local login credentials and you can change them yourself on your SIF Setup page.

We provide external user access with non-UCPH credentials, but for legal reasons this access requires explicit prior acceptance from the relevant faculty legal unit and such external users can only be invited to join existing SIF projects owned by a UCPH employee. Please contact us at the support email below or get in touch with the relevant Faculty Secretariat for further details.

KU / UCPH Users

Our Sensitive Information Facility (SIF) gives you easy and secure access to all of your content.

External Users

Our Sensitive Information Facility (SIF) gives you easy and secure access to all of your content.

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