Five Safes TES

Five Safes TES is a system for the secure, remote execution of GA4GH TES workflows in Trusted Research Environments (TREs).

• TRE managers can register environments, create projects, and manage authorised access.
• Researchers can submit GA4GH TES workflows for secure execution within participating TREs.
• Agents at remote TREs automatically collect and run approved workflows.
• Supports offline TREs by enabling pre-approved container images to be loaded in advance.
• Delivers results through a controlled egress process for review before release to the requester.

Five Safes TES enables secure cross-TRE federated analytics, where the data remains in place and only the researchers’ analysis code is sent to the data. Unlike many federated analytics tools, it is specifically designed to meet the stringent technical and governance constraints of TREs by separating the logical stages of a federated project.

Built on international open standards from GA4GH and ELIXIR, Five Safes TES uses the GA4GH Task Execution Service to receive federated analysis requests. This approach supports the essential disclosure control processes within TREs, ensuring outputs are reviewed to prevent disclosive data from leaving secure environments.