Case Study: Naturalis.nl gives researchers secure self-service access with SURF Research Access Management

Naturalis gives 120 scientists secure self-service access with SURF Research Access Management

Naturalis, a biodiversity research center, faced a challenge with its standard IT solutions offering researchers too little autonomy. They needed a way for their scientists to securely and independently invite collaborators without creating an administrative burden or cluttering access rights. To solve this, they turned to vendor SURF and its service, SURF Research Access Management (SRAM).

The solution implemented by SURF allowed researchers to create and manage their own project groups and data access via SRAM. This provided automatic synchronization of access rights using organizational identities, which improved security by automatically revoking access when researchers left. The results included a reduced administrative burden for IT support and a more secure, researcher-controlled environment. Naturalis has been enthusiastic about SRAM since its implementation in early 2024 and has plans to integrate it with more services like Galaxy.

Naturalis.nl