Areas

Modern research lives in the digital world: your experimental data, trained AI models, proprietary algorithm source code, complex simulations, patent drafts, and daily correspondence with international partners reside primarily on computers, servers, collaborative platforms, and cloud services. This infrastructure enables remote work, real-time collaboration, and the storage of massive amounts of information, but it also concentrates the bulk of your work's economic and strategic value in systems that are prime targets for sophisticated cyberattacks specifically designed against scientists and engineers. A single mistake—opening a phishing email, connecting from an unsecured network, or using an unauthorized service—can mean the irreversible loss of years of research or the surrender of competitive advantages to foreign state or corporate actors. 

 Warning signs  

Be immediately suspicious if you receive emails from "known partners" requesting urgent access to platforms or sharing links "to review results," if you detect logins from countries unrelated to your collaborations, if someone pressures you to use external services like personal Dropbox or WeTransfer instead of institutional channels, if your account shows massive downloads outside of working hours, or if foreign colleagues repeatedly insist on receiving source code or complete datasets "for replication." 

Aspects to consider 

Before taking any digital action, consciously classify what you are handling: Is it public data ready for publication, internal project information, confidential results not yet validated, or critical assets such as proprietary models or pending patents?  

Check if all your institutional services (email, VPN, data platforms) have multi-factor authentication enabled and if you use a password manager to avoid reusing credentials across platforms.  

Evaluate your daily habits: Do you connect using public Wi-Fi networks in the lab or cafeteria? Is your personal laptop up to date and encrypted? Does your institution offer phishing drills specifically for researchers, and are you familiar with the incident reporting protocol?  

Also consider whether international partners adhere to the same cybersecurity standards or if there is pressure to share through informal channels. 

Good practices 

Adopt the principle of "least privilege": only access what you need for your specific task and log out when finished. Always categorize: create separate folders (public/internal/confidential/critical) and encrypt the last two categories using institutional tools. Never open suspicious attachments, even from known contacts—always verify through an alternative channel. Use a mandatory institutional VPN for any remote access and a personal mobile hotspot instead of public Wi-Fi. Actively participate in phishing drills and use password managers approved by your institution. Maintain automatic 3-2-1 backups (3 copies, 2 media types, 1 off-site) and report any anomalies to the cybersecurity team within one hour. 

A Spanish advanced materials research group received an email from the "European project coordinator" requesting "urgent access to the experimental data platform." The principal investigator, believing it legitimate, shared his temporary account with read-only permissions. Within 48 hours, 150GB of experimental results were exfiltrated to servers outside of Europe. Six months later, a foreign university published identical results with optimizations that were only possible with that specific data.