Decommission of eCUI

The eCUI system is being decommissioned and as of June 2024 no new projects are being onboarded to this system. For inquiries related to projects involving Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI), please see Office of Research Integrity and Assurance (gmu.edu).

Service Summary

eCUI is a virtual computing infrastructure to support research projects involving Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) data which must follow the NIST 800-171R1 standard for data protection. The eCUI environment is comprised of a series of technical and administrative controls designed to protect data and is configurable to support a range of research computing needs.  A separate CUI instance is created and used for each project.

Key Features

  • Virtual desktops and servers configured to run Window 10, Windows Server 2016 or Red Hat Linux v7
  • Options for memory and storage to meet research requirements
  • Installation of approved software onto the virtual systems
  • Secure data transfer in and out of the controlled environment

Getting This Service

Note: Only Principal Investigators (PI) (or designees) of research projects can request these services. Faculty, staff, students, and others involved in the research project and authorized to access the environment can use it.

Principal Investigators (PI) of research projects should first request the research consultation service to review the technical requirements for their research project with the Office of Research Computing and Information Technology Services.  If eCUI is determined to be a suitable platform, the PI will be provided information on how to request the project setup in eCUI.  The request will be reviewed to ensure the project has an approved Technology Control Plan and that all project personnel have undergone background checks and have completed the required training. Once the project has been provisioned, the PI can request to add/remove users and add software to the virtual computing system and request Globus Access or Allowlist for Data Transfer in/out of the environment.

Additional Information

Once the project has been approved, all project personnel must complete Export Control, Insider Threat, ITS Security Awareness training and TCP or CUI-SP training prior to being granted access to the eCUI environment.

Configuration Options

Key: O= Optional; *= Configurable with ITS Review

Feature Standard Large Server Standard Server
OS Windows 10 Windows Server 2016 Windows Server 2016 RHEL Desktop Purpose Built Virtual Server (as needed)
Use Case Virtual Desktop delivered via Citrix Server for Resource Intensive Applications Purpose Built Virtual Server (as needed) Virtual Desktop delivered via Citrix Purpose Built Virtual Server (as needed)
vCPU 4 8 4* 4 4
Memory (GB) 16 64 32* 16 32
GPU (Graphics Only) As Needed As Needed As Needed
Security Review Required Yes Yes
Local Storage (GB) 100 100 * 100 *
Project Storage (GB) 200* 200* 200* 200* 200*
Home Storage (GB) 10 10 10 10 10
Power Management (Reboot Schedule) Logoff & Nightly Weekly Negotiable Logoff & Nightly Negotiable
Network Fixed CUI VRF Fixed CUI VRF Dedicated VRF Fixed CUI VRF Dedicated VRF
Domain MESA MESA MESA MESA MESA
Service Accounts O O
Access Citrix Citrix Citrix/RDP Citrix Citrix/SSH
Antivirus MS ATP Crowdstrike Crowdstrike Crowdstrike Crowdstrike
Firewall ITS Managed ITS Managed ITS Managed* ITS Managed ITS Managed*
Management Agents WMware Tools,  Tenable WMware Tools,  Tenable WMware Tools, Tenable WMware Tools,  Tenable WMware Tools, Puppet, Tenable
Logging Splunk Splunk Splunk Splunk Splunk
Backup Nightly  Nightly  Nightly*  Nightly  Nightly*
Patching Yes Yes Yes* Yes Yes*
Monitoring Yes Yes O Yes O

Applications

Key: L= Local Install; A= Available via Citrix Workspace

Feature Standard Large Server Standard Server
Web Server O - MSSQL O - MySQL
Database L/A O A O
7-Zip 19.00 x64 L/A O A
Access 2016 L/A O A
Access 2019 L/A O A
Active Perl 5.26.1 Build 2601 64-bit A O A O
Adobe Acrobat Reader DC L/A O A
Anaconda3 2018.12 64-bit A O A O
Cygwin64 A O A O
Excel 2016 L/A O A
Excel 2019 L/A O A
IBM SPSS Statistics 26 A O A O
IDLE Python 3.7 64-bit A O A O
MATLAB R2018a A O A O
MiKTex 2.9 A O A O
Notepad++ A O A
Openrefine A O A O
PowerPoint 2016 L/A O A
PowerPoint 2019
PuTTY 0.70 64-bit A O A
Python 2.7.15 A O A O
R x64 3.5.3 A O A O
RDP L/A O A
RStudio A O A O
SAS 9.4 English A O A O
StataMP 15 64-bit A O A O
TeXworks A O A O
Visio L/A O A
Word 2016 L/A O A
Word 2019 L/A O A
WordPad L/A O A