The Graduate School takes its role in providing a robust and secure computing platform for the online graduate application portal, MyGrad, and the Graduate School public website very seriously. The Graduate School runs all its services through Microsoft Azure for the Application for Graduate Admission, and MyGrad. Our public facing website is also cloud-hosted. The University has an agreement with Microsoft to ensure compliance with FERPA data protection laws.
Backup
MyGrad has a cloud-based server infrastructure with geographic redundancy, backups are continuously created. Other public-facing web content is backed up each day.
Security
Graduate School systems have been audited for security, and generally follow OWASP guidelines for web application security. MyGrad provides transaction level auditing of data changes. Authentication for student data requires a two-factor authentication (Duo) in addition to UW NetID login authentication. All MyGrad users are required to submit authorization forms with employee and authorized supervisor signatures. These authorizations are regularly monitored.
Availability
Data are mirrored in real-time from the U.S. West regional data center to the U.S. East data center. Azure-hosted services are subject to the Microsoft Azure service level agreement.