How can I restrict downloading of files stored in my VM in Google Cloud Platform to my local PC?

Question

I would like to know how can I restrict downloading of files stored in my VM in Google Cloud Platform to my local PC? I have some restricted datasets which I would like to store in my VM. I want to give my collaborators access to the dataset, such that they should be able to view the dataset, run scripts on it, etc; but not download it to their local systems.

I would also be open to using Azure.

Not a `machine-learning` question, kindly do not spam irrelevant tags (removed). — desertnaut, May 19 '20 at 23:37
Is your collaborators have access to the data only on the VM? or also from their local computer (for executing script,...)? — guillaume blaquiere, May 20 '20 at 08:59
No, everything in the VM. The dataset is of medical importance (confident), that's why I want to restrict downloading — fliptrail, May 20 '20 at 09:04

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered May 21 '20 at 11:08

The way to download a file from a VM is to setup an FTP or an SFTP server. So if you nor your users don't set it up they will not be able to download it.

That isn't exactly true though. If you are allowing them to SSH into the VM and they can see the file, they can simply issue a cat operation to see the data and copy it into their local machines. And even if you overwrite the cat command to avoid being used in this situation, they could still use tac and restore the file on their end. Furthermore, if they can execute binaries they could create their own service to send the file.

There are actually many ways to get the file even if you don't want to, but what I'm trying to say is that the data will not be completely safe as long as they have access to the dataset file.

Regardless, something that comes to my mind is that you could import the data in the dataset into a Cloud SQL instance so that they can query the data but not get the file. I'm linking you the documentation about how to import the data into a MySQL, PostgreSQL or SQL Server instance.

Let me know if this approach suits your needs.

let's say for every row in the SQL server, I store the patient speech and transcript. I think I might be able to run a query to extract the speeches and transcript and then recreate the file, doing all of this inside a python script. Would this be possible? — fliptrail, May 21 '20 at 14:30
I'm afraid I was unaware that the database contained audio files, I was thinking about a simple dump file or a csv. I'm not sure how you could handle this situation, there are different approaches in [this question's answers](https://stackoverflow.com/q/154707/10810527). What kind of scripts should they be able to run? — Ajordat, May 22 '20 at 07:27

How can I restrict downloading of files stored in my VM in Google Cloud Platform to my local PC?

1 Answers1