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SATRE 2026: Data Management

Standardised Architecture for Trusted Research Environments (SATRE) is a DARE UK driver project to support the development of a secure reference architecture for Trusted Research Environments (TRE), allowing research teams to benchmark their own TRE against an open specification.

Aridhia was an early adopter of the specification, and the first commercial TRE provider to score itself against it in 2024, and we rescored our platform in 2025. This blog series details our rescore for 2026, covering each section of SATRE in turn.

In this blog we cover our score for the Data Management section of SATRE.

What is Data Management in SATRE?

This section spans a wide section of data management requirements, from granular user management policies (e.g. multi-user accounts should not be issued) to high level product requirements (e.g. users should be provided with a searchable metadata catalogue. It further addresses user identification, authentication and management, requirements for secure and legally compliant data ingress and egress from the TRE, and a number of recommendations concerning data access management from both a policy and technical implementation perspective.

2025 Data Management Score

In 2025 we scored the DRE at 54 out of 62 for this section, and provided the following reasons for this score:

• Aridhia DRE Workspaces provide a secure compute environment with inbound and outbound airlock review and approval processes.
• Data cannot be copied out of a workspace to a local desktop, data can only leave the workspace via an approved and audited airlock request.
• The workspaces come with a Postgres database, over twenty bioinformatics analysis modules, R-Studio and Jupyter Notebook built in – without the need to use a virtual machine.
• Virtual machines are updated with security updates routinely as is the supporting TRE infrastructure.

What has changed in 2026?

We have increased out score by 5 points in this area to 59 out of 62. There are a few notable developments that have resulted in this increase. We integrated SACRO libraries natively within the DRE accessible from R and python. We have also integrated the SACRO webapp as an optional app for users, allowing data files to be risk assessed, reviewed and commented on before airlock export. Additionally, a new read-only ‘reviewer’ role has been added to workspaces, allowing independent reviewers from outside of a project to inspect and approve outputs before egress.