PetaGene, provider of state of the art compression technology for genomic data, today announced the addition of PetaSuite Protect to its award winning range of genomic data products.
CAMBRIDGE, UK April 11, 2019 — PetaGene, provider of state of the art compression technology for genomic data, today announced the addition of PetaSuite Protect to its award winning range of genomic data products. PetaSuite Protect will provide users with the tools to encrypt their genomic data, manage fine-grain access to it and demonstrate compliance with applicable regulations.
Security has always been a key concern with human genomic data. While it’s possible to encrypt data of any type to improve security, the size of genomic datasets and demands of the various privacy regulations have presented specific problems. PetaSuite Protect will add FIPS 140-2 compliant AES-256 regional encryption to existing compression technology.
PetaSuite Protect provides powerful compliance capability with more than just encryption. It also has the ability to grant fine-grain access to genomic data files to give an additional layer of control and enable deep auditing of usage.
Currently, with exome and sequenced whole genome data, permissions for access are granted on a whole-file or whole-object basis, thus granting permissions to all data unnecessarily. Furthermore, there is little ability to track usage. PetaSuite Protect represents a step-change since it gives data holders the ability to grant users access to only specific regions of any given genomic data file. It can even grant different users access to different regions within the same file.
In common with PetaGene’s established compression technology, the new encryption and access capabilities are completely transparent to genomic tools and analysis pipelines. For example, Alice may only have access to a subset of chromosome 1, while Bob may only have access to a subset of chromosomes 8 and 22. Both will see a regular BAM file via their tool or pipeline but if either tries to access other areas they only see an empty region of data. Furthermore PetaGene supports fast efficient streaming from object storage and remote teams can access this data.
The details of who gave the permissions, and when, are transparently and automatically recorded for the data owner in a searchable cryptographic ledger which also records information relating to how the data is accessed and used. This includes:
- The identity of the user
- The file/object and region accessed by the user
- Date and time of access
- The command line of software with options used to access the data
Dan Greenfield CEO & Co-founder of PetaGene commented, “We are delighted to be launching these new capabilities within the PetaSuite offering. By providing security alongside compression, while maintaining transparent access for existing tools and pipelines, we are providing a single solution to our customers’ most pressing challenges – how to keep storage costs under control and manage security and compliance for their data.”
PetaGene will be showcasing the new product at the Bio-IT World Conference and Expo at the Seaport World Trade Center in Boston, MA between April 16th and 18th 2019.
About PetaGene
PetaGene was founded in Cambridge, the birthplace of genomics, to address the rapidly growing data management problems of the genomics industry. PetaGene’s software enables compression of huge amounts of genomic data without compromising on access or data quality. The company’s products go beyond regular data reduction techniques and have twice been recognized by Bio-IT World’s Best of Show Award for their industry-leading performance and usability.
Phone: +44(0)1223 655651
Email: info@petagene.com
Web: https://petagene.com
For more information contact Matthew Kelly – matthew@petagene.com
