Department of Medicine IT

Storage Services

There are many storage options available to members of UW. Below are the common options we get questions about, but is not a comprehensive list of options.

If you need help finding the storage option that works best for you or your group please contact our helpdesk.

Department of Medicine Leased Storage

The Department of Medicine IT offers several options for private or shared network storage, accessible from on- or off-campus. Full User accounts with our support includes private storage on our file server, backed up twice a day, and secured by Outpost domain username and passwords. Shared Storage options are available in 50 GB and 1 TB options. For more details see our IT Service Catalog.

UW OneDrive for Business

The UW Microsoft Collaborative Applications (MCSA) provides online storage and collaboration options to all UW members. OneDrive for Business provides a cloud storage resource for HIPAA-protected and FERPA-protected data. Other services such as Office 365 Exchange and SharePoint Online are also covered by the UW MCSA agreement and may also be acceptable for HIPAA-protected information. Sharing of documents with external collaborators is possible by using sponsored NetIDs. Please note that this is different from the individual consumer version of OneDrive, which does not meet the security requirements for UW data storage.

DropBox & iCloud

DropBox, iCloud, and other free online services, while useful for personal purposes, should not be used for any reason within UW Medicine unless the appropriate contracts or legal agreements are in place. Data should be stored only on institutional servers and systems unless there is a compelling reason not to. Data stored on free cloud based storage is no longer under institutional control and can be compromised. For more information on appropriate cloud storage within UW Medicine and the necessary legal agreements please see the cloud security page from UW Medicine IT Security: https://depts.washington.edu/uwmedsec/restricted/guidance/cloud-computing/