sciebo - Hochschulcloud.nrw

sciebo is a non-commercial cloud storage service provided by universities in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) for universities in NRW, which allows you, as a member of the university community, to securely synchronize and share your data related to your studies, research, teaching, and work.

Students and staff receive 30 GB of free cloud storage space.

🔒 Securely stored in North Rhine-Westphalia

Your data is stored and processed exclusively at a university location in North Rhine-Westphalia (WWU Münster). Thanks to strict German data protection standards, your files are exceptionally well protected.

🌍 Access—anytime, anywhere

Access your files flexibly:

directly in your web browser,
via the Nextcloud desktop client
or conveniently with the sciebo app on your smartphone and tablet.

This way, you always have your documents with you—whether on campus, working from home, or on the go.

🤝 Collaborate easily

Easily share files and folders with colleagues, students, or external guests. Flexible sharing options allow you to, if desired:

Password protection
Time-limited sharing
controlled access for teams and projects

📝 Collaborate on documents and presentations

With the integrated online office suite Collabora, text documents, presentations, and spreadsheets can be edited collaboratively and simultaneously—ideal for virtual meetings, classes, office hours, or project work.

📦 For large amounts of data: Project Boxes

For workgroups handling very large amounts of data or for long-term projects, employees can request so-called project boxes with capacities of up to 2 TB.

✅ Requirements

To use this service, you need an active ZIMT account with a university user ID and the corresponding password.
Use these login credentials to register once at: https://hochschulcloud.nrw/

💶 Costs

Free of charge

🔎 Useful Information

The LaTeX editor Overleaf is also integrated into sciebo. You can access it via the Overleaf icon in the top sciebo menu bar.
Please note: This free version of Overleaf is provided “as is.”

⚠️ Important Note⚠️

sciebo is not a backup system!! Therefore, you should always back up important data on at least one additional storage medium.

Technical Information

A Sciebo account is initially valid for 12 months. After that, you must re-authenticate (for an additional 12 months) in the“My Sciebo” personal area.

The account can be renewed as long as you remain an authorized user at the university.

If this period expires without reauthentication, a 6-month grace period begins: During these 6 months, the user can use the service without restriction. After the 6 months, the account will be suspended for an additional 3 months. The suspension can be lifted by sending an email to support. If no reauthentication occurs by the end of the 3-month suspension period, the account will be deleted.

All users are generally notified multiple times via email before their accounts expire, are suspended, or are deleted:

6 weeks before the account’s expiration date
1 day before the account’s expiration date
6 weeks before the account’s suspension date
1 week before the account suspension date

When uploading files—especially large ones—you should always use Nextcloud’s desktop client. The desktop client works just like a regular (Windows/Apple/Linux) file folder; you can “drag” files directly into it—in other words, upload them.
You can download the desktop client from the download section of the sciebo homepage for all major operating systems (including as an app for mobile devices).

As a university employee, you can increase your storage capacity to 500 GB on your own (unfortunately, this offer does not apply to students).
On the sciebo homepage at https://hochschulcloud.nrw, select the “My.Sciebo” section.
Select “University of Siegen” as your institution.
Log in to the “Shibboleth Identity Provider” page using your university user ID (not your sciebo ID).
Select the menu item “Increase Storage Capacity.”

To obtain more than 500 GB of storage space, you must apply for a project box (see below).

Only university employees may apply for project boxes. Students must have a supervisor at the university to apply for and manage the project box. This also applies to student initiatives.
Project boxes are not approved for functional email addresses.
When applying for a project box, you may optionally provide an additional email address for someone involved in the project. Notifications will also be sent to this email address, including in cases where the project box owner is no longer reachable (see below).
On the sciebo homepage at https://hochschulcloud.nrw, select the “My.Sciebo” section.
Select “University of Siegen” as your institution.
Log in on the “Shibboleth Identity Provider” page using your university user ID (not your sciebo ID).
Select the menu item “Project Boxes: Request a Project Box” and follow the instructions.

If you leave the university or the project but want the project box to remain active, you must reassign the box—in a timely manner—as follows:
On the sciebo homepage at https://hochschulcloud.nrw, select the “My.Sciebo” section.
Select “University of Siegen” as your institution.
Log in to the “Shibboleth Identity Provider” page using your university user ID (not your sciebo ID).
Select the menu item“Project Boxes: Manage Project Box.” Check the box next to the relevant project box on the left and select the“Change Owner” button at the bottom of the page.
Enter the person’s currently valid university email address. The person must be affiliated with the University of Siegen.

Legal Information

In general, sciebo is intended solely for storing and sharing data related to academic studies, research, and teaching.

The following guidelines apply at the University of Siegen:

Category	Note on typical security requirements	Protection Requirement
Non-personal data derived from public sources	Normal	Permitted
Official (non-scientific) data, such as exam results, expert opinions	Normal to Very High	Permitted only if encrypted with integrity assurance
Scientific data, such as test results, confidential research data	Normal to Very high	Permitted only if encrypted with integrity protection
Personal data (pursuant to Art. 9 of the GDPR)	Very high	Not permitted

To encrypt important data, you can use a tool such as CryptoMator. The software is available for download at https://cryptomator.org/de/ (available for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS).

How does Cryptomator work?

Launch Cryptomator and click [+] to select “Create Vault.”
In sciebo, create a new folder that will serve as a vault for your data, and click “Save.”
Set a secure (!) password (Note: Write down the password and keep it safe. If you forget the password, you cannot recover it—your data will be lost!) Click “Create Vault.”
The “vault” will be mounted as a new virtual network drive.
Open or unlock the vault by entering the password. An empty file folder will open.
Now use drag-and-drop to move the files you want to encrypt into this empty folder, or save your documents under the specified drive letter.
Cryptomator performs the encryption transparently in the background (within your cloud storage, you can now see how your files—or their encrypted versions—are stored in the folder labeled “Vault.” It is not possible to deduce file names or folder structures.)
Close the folder, which is now filled with your data, and lock the “Vault” by clicking the “Lock Vault” button.

Removing the Vault

Clicking the [-] button in the lower-left corner only removes the vault from the list of available vaults. Permanently delete the vault from your sciebo account.

Before permanently deleting it, make sure the vault no longer contains any important data.

For more information, visit https://cryptomator.org/de/.

See also the corresponding help page on the sciebo homepage.