FERPA compliance with airSlate

Protect the privacy of student records by deploying educational workflows with airSlate ‒ a FERPA-ready business automation solution.
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What is FERPA?

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974, commonly known as FERPA, is a federal law governing the privacy of educational records. It grants specific rights to students and sets restrictions on the handling of educational records by academic institutions.

FERPA gives each student such rights as:

  • The right to review their own student education records
  • The right to request changes to records if the parent or student believes they are inaccurate
  • The right to challenge the release of records to third parties
  • The right to file a complaint with the FERPA office

FERPA requires schools to obtain written permission from students before releasing educational records. In certain well-defined circumstances, some information may be released without written permission from the student.

Categories of protected information include:

  • Educational Records — grades, course schedules, student financial records, and other materials that are maintained by the educational agency or institution.
  • Personally Identifiable Information — information that can be used to track a person’s identity either directly or indirectly.
    • Direct Identifiers — includes a student’s name, address, or school identification number.
    • Indirect Identifiers — can be combined to identify specific individuals. Examples include a place of birth, race, religion, and employment information.
  • Directory Information — information that may be published in a student handbook or newsletter which could include a student’s name, address, telephone number, etc. A school may disclose this information to third parties without consent if it has given public notice. Parents and students have the right to request, in writing, that their directory information not be published.
Maintaining FERPA compliance with airSlate

Currently, there are no certification programs approved by the federal government that assess third-party compliance with FERPA. Academic institutions must perform their own assessments to determine whether a third-party product or service affects their compliance.

Schools use airSlate to facilitate electronic communication between educators, administrators, school districts, and parents and students in a FERPA compliant way to protect the privacy of student education records.

Here’s how airSlate supports customers in the education sector with their FERPA compliance.

  • Data Security. airSlate hosts its user data with industry-leading hosting providers such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft’s Azure. With their world-class data centers, including strictly controlled perimeters, ingress points with video surveillance, on-site security, cutting-edge architecture, and security monitoring tools, our hosting partners elevate security and help us protect our customer data.
  • Encryption. airSlate uses 256-bit AES encryption to protect customer data in transit and at rest.
  • Internal Controls. airSlate’s dedicated security team works tirelessly to ensure the security of our customer’s data with such practices as data collection minimization.
  • Transparent security and privacy practices. airSlate’s policy is to always be transparent about the data that we collect and how this data is used. Our privacy policy is kept up to date and is publically available. Enterprise customers can review our third-party security audit reports, including our annual SOC-2 Type 2 report.
  • Third-party integration security. A separate, secure communication channel is built to integrate with each third-party integration provider. This way, airSlate ensures that all the data transferred between the systems is encrypted and kept safe.

Please reach out to our sales team at sales@airslate.com to request our education-specific terms of service and to learn more information about airSlate’s FERPA ready solution.

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