Data security

DTU's supercomputer ensures our data sovereignty

At a time when the Danish government wants to make us less dependent on tech giants, DTU's national supercomputer is now opening up for broader use of its secure data storage. At Computerome, data is securely fenced in on Danish soil.

With its 50 petabyte (the equivalent of 50 million GB) Computerome has the capacity to store all Denmark's public data. Photo: Bax Lindhardt.

Monday 10 February 2025

Sole Bugge Møller

While there is a strong focus on securing Denmark's critical infrastructure against hostile powers, everything from authorities to public institutions and private companies have placed a large part of their digital infrastructure in the hands of tech giants like Google, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft. This raises questions about data security and how data is harvested, which can be critical when dealing with sensitive data of national importance.

So, there is a need for a secure place to store and process data without exploiting it for commercial purposes, and now DTU's supercomputer, Computerome, is opening up for broader use.

Computerome is one of Denmark's most advanced supercomputers, and with its 50 petabytes of storage capacity, it has room to house all of Denmark's public data. Until now, Computerome has been targeted at university environments and health research with a lot of sensitive personal data, but now everything from public institutions to private companies can use the supercomputer's powerful computing power for AI models and a wide range of other purposes.

“It's crucial that we can promote innovation without compromising data security, which is why we provide infrastructure like Computerome. It fits into our mission to benefit society and it also supports our research environments and contributes to the security and development of society,” says University Director Claus Nielsen.

Giving up our independence

The Danish government's expert group on tech giants published a report in December in which they concluded that ‘the decoupling of parts of the digital infrastructures from democratic control, insight and common rules of the game is a fundamental problem.’

This can lead to a range of economic, democratic, and security challenges.

When we hand over data to the tech giants, we give up some of our independence, says Peter Løngreen, CEO of Computerome.

“The big tech companies use user data to optimize their business. Their business model is usually based on harvesting and utilizing your data without transparency or consent. In addition, it's difficult to ensure compliance with GDPR rules to safely store personal data with these companies,” he says.

Computerome's director Peter Løngreen believes that more companies and institutions will be aware of data sovereignty in the future. Photo: Bax Lindhardt

No interest in harvesting data

At Computerome, users always have complete control over their data, which is fenced in on Danish soil.

The supercomputer uses an isolated network without internet access, and users can work with confidential data without the risk of the information being shared without consent.

“We must always be able to account for what has happened to the data. This creates a level of trust that makes government institutions, among others, want to use us to store sensitive data, and in some cases, it is the basis for them being able to work with data at all because they know with 100% certainty that this data will not be copied,” says Peter Løngreen.

Every time someone accesses the data, it is recorded, and the logs are stored for 15 years. Computerome has no vested interest in harvesting data and fulfils the strictest requirements for data protection and GDPR compliance.

"Our business model is transparency about what happens to your data - and that's what sets us apart from the competition," says Peter Løngreen, CEO of Computerome.

More data will be sensitive in the future

One of Computerome's customers is the Danish Climate Data Agency, which recently chose to place their climate data on the supercomputer, where they can process complex data sets much faster than before. Among other things, this will support the green transition and contribute to climate-proofing Danish society.

“One of Computerome's strengths is that they are used as a data centre by other public authorities, including the Danish Genome Centre, so we know that security is under control, as well as they are very concerned about limiting the climate footprint,” says Rikke Hougaard Zeberg, Director of the Danish Climate Data Agency.

And while Computerome has so far focused on life science and research with highly sensitive personal data, Peter Løngreen predicts that much more data will need extra security in the future.

“It doesn't take much for data to become personally sensitive or business-critical. For example, climate data sometimes comes down to household level, so I believe that more and more data categorised as non-sensitive today will become so in the future,” he says.

Facts

About Computerome

Computerome was established in 2014, initially as Denmark's national Life Science Supercomputing Centre in collaboration with the University of Copenhagen, but DTU now has full ownership of Computerome.
Located at DTU Risø Campus in a highly secured area.
50 petabytes of storage capacity and more than 50,000 CPU cores, and its own GPU cluster with a secure cloud environment.
Existing customers include universities, regions, government agencies, the Ministry of Finance, the Danish Climate Data Agency and several private companies.
100% of the power consumption comes from renewable energy, while 50% of the surplus heat from Computerome's data centre is reused to heat buildings on Risø Campus.

Contact

Peter Løngreen Director Department of IT Service peterl@dtu.dk