Secure computing at ASU
KE Secure Cloud is the suite of secure computing services for regulated research managed by ASU Knowledge Enterprise (KE). Integrating high-security data storage and advanced computing resources, Arizona State University provides a suite of services called KE Secure Cloud to support research projects with restricted data requirements. KE Secure Cloud can support the entire research data lifecycle — from accessing health data and data capture to analysis and storage.
A secure environment for restricted data
The HIPAA-aligned KE Secure Cloud provides secure, flexible, and customizable computing environments for external collaborations, configuration testing, and AI model development. It also serves as a prototyping and testing platform for secure applications that can later be integrated into other systems once validated.
Available Services within KE Secure Cloud
KE Secure Cloud supports multi-institutional collaboration and computationally intensive analysis for health research. The platform also complies with additional laws and regulations, such as FERPA. Researchers can transfer approved data into and out of the environment via a Secure File Transfer web application and Globus.
| Public Health Data
KE Secure Cloud houses the Honest Broker for Arizona Department of Health Services datasets and is an authorized environment for Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services data.
| Electronic Data Capture
REDCap is a web application for building and managing online surveys and databases. KE Secure Cloud’s HIPAA-aligned REDCap environment can host fully identified information and supports online and offline data capture for research studies.
| Bring Your Own Data
For data under a Data Use Agreement or other contract, KE Secure Cloud compliance analysts can review the contract to determine if KE Secure Cloud meets the security requirements of the contract.
| Virtual Machines
KE Secure Cloud provides private, dedicated virtual computers (virtual machines) tailored specifically for your research. These secure environments let you perform individualized analysis and securely handle restricted data right from your desktop. Key features of KE Secure Cloud Virtual Machines include:
• Choice of Operating System: Available as either Windows or Linux, depending on each researcher’s specific software and analysis needs.
• Flexible Sizing: Virtual machines come in multiple configurations to match different workloads, ensuring researchers have precisely the computing resources needed without waste.
• Expandable Resources: Additional memory (RAM) and dedicated local storage can be easily added if projects grow or require extra computing power.
| Aloe Supercomputer
The Aloe supercomputer is a powerful, secure computing resource designed to support advanced research in areas such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and bioinformatics—especially when handling restricted datasets. Aloe provides more computing capacity than standard virtual machines, enabling researchers to perform largescale analyses efficiently and securely. Aloe is a Linuxbased supercomputer and does not support Windows applications. Access to Aloe is automatically included with the purchase of a KE Secure Cloud virtual machine, though it can also be purchased separately to meet individual project needs. Aloe’s key features include:
• 14 Standard Computing Servers
Each server has 128 CPU cores and 512 GB of memory, making them ideal for computationally intensive analyses.
• 2 High-Memory Computing Servers
These servers offer 128 CPU cores and 2 TB (terabytes) of memory, specifically designed for tasks requiring very large datasets or extensive memory usage.
• 10 GPU-Enhanced Computing Servers
Each server has 48 CPU cores, 512 GB of memory, and two advanced NVIDIA A100 GPUs (20 GPUs total), optimized for GPU-intensive tasks such as machine learning and deep learning.
Aloe provides two convenient methods of computing. Aloe offers an interactive web-based environment, providing a desktop-like experience and graphical interfaces, such as Jupyter and RStudio, for interactive computing. Aloe also supports asynchronous batch computing jobs, allowing researchers to conveniently execute very large computations—or extensive sets of computations—in the background. Researchers can submit jobs to Aloe and return later for the results, maximizing efficiency for lengthy or resource-intensive analyses.
| KE Secure Cloud Data Storage
KE Secure Cloud includes centralized data storage that seamlessly integrates with virtual machines and the Aloe supercomputer. This service provides approximately 1 petabyte (PB) of fast, highly reliable storage space specifically designed to meet the needs of restricted research data. With KE Secure Cloud storage, researchers can easily access data from virtual machines and the Aloe supercomputer and move data between different KE Secure Cloud computing resources.
| Google Cloud Environments
KE Secure Cloud also offers secure cloud environments hosted on Google Cloud Platform (GCP), giving researchers access to advanced tools and services designed for handling restricted health data. These secure environments support a wide range of Google Cloud services, including BigQuery for large-scale data analysis, Vertex AI Notebooks and Vertex AI Platform for artificial intelligence and machine learning, and the Cloud Healthcare API for managing regulated healthcare data—among many others.
| REDCap: Fully Identified Data Environment
KE Secure Cloud provides a HIPAA-aligned REDCap environment specifically designed to securely host fully identified research data, supporting both online and offline data collection for research studies.
Building on Past Success
KE Secure Cloud regularly supports successful research collaborations with healthcare institutions. Recently, ASU researchers teamed with physicians at Valleywise Health to study a program designed to help refugees navigate the healthcare system. Using KE Secure Cloud to securely transfer and analyze restricted health information from over 100,000 patient visits, the research team identified critical insights into patient outcomes and healthcare needs. These findings have directly informed patient care practices and are the foundation for an upcoming publication.