IDERA SOLUTIONS FOR

FERPA COMPLIANCE

Ensure your organization meets the requirements of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act

WHAT IS FERPA?

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) was introduced in 1974. This United States federal law mandates the confidentiality and protection of student information in any educational institution that receives funding from the US Federal Government from kindergarten through the university level. FERPA generally prevents an education agency or institution from sharing student records or personally identifiable information in those records with individuals who are not authorized to view that information. In some cases, authorized individuals need to be monitored to deter insider theft and unauthorized dissemination of information. From an information technology perspective student information must be audited for access, changes to access, and changes to the data. FERPA requires institutions to maintain logs of all student information activity.

Specifically, FERPA mandates that you must be able to address the following questions:

  • Who has access to my “student information”?
  • What has changed with SQL Server permissions, logins and access?
  • How do I define a secure baseline and maintain it across my SQL Server environment?
  • How do I audit permission, object, and data changes to student information on my SQL Servers?
  • How do I ensure that my FERPA data can be rendered unreadable wherever it is backed up and additionally restored whenever needed?

AVOID FERPA VIOLATIONS

With IDERA’s Solutions

SQL Secure

SQL Secure is a security analysis solution for both SQL Server and Azure SQL Database that helps IT organizations identify database security violations and ensure security policies are enforced.

  • Find out who has access to what. Identify and manage users’ assigned and effective rights and permissions at the server, database, and object level.
  • Use customizable pre-built templates for FERPA compliance (which leverage guidelines from STIG and CIS) to extract the information needed to satisfy an auditor’s requirements.
  • Monitor changes continuously with snapshots of the security model on a regularly scheduled or ad-hoc basis to detect unwanted changes to access rights and security settings.
  • Define exactly what SQL Server security information you want to collect and when. Gathers information from SQL Server, Azure SQL Database, OS, File System, Registry, Active Directory (AD), and Azure AD.
  • Get alerts on violations of corporate policies to secure your environment from the most common methods of intrusion.

SQL Compliance Manager

SQL Compliance Manager is a comprehensive auditing, alerting, and reporting solution that uses policy-based algorithms to track changes to your SQL Server objects and data.

  • Get continuous auditing of all SQL Server activity by identifying who did what, when, where and how,whether the event is initiated by privileged users or hackers.
  • Monitor and audit all data access, updates, schema modifications, and permission changes. Audited items include: DDL, DML (including SQL Statements), security changes, database SELECT operations, and sensitive columns.
  • Ease the research and configuration required to comply with FERPA regulations via built-in templates with pre-configured audit settings that align with the regulatory citations.
  • Set up alerts to track suspect server activity including flexible alert definition, custom messaging, and alert reporting. Additionally, alerts can be applied across the board, or to specific servers,databases, or tables as needed.

SQL Safe Backup

SQL Safe Backup is an automated SQL Server backup and recovery solution that provides customizable policies to help you facilitate backing up and restoring your FERPA data.

  • Employ AES 128-bit and 256-bit encryption that will protect backups and render the backup files unreadable anywhere they are stored.
  • Choose from flexible recovery options including: IntelliRestore™ providing point-in- time recovery,InstantRestore™ to stream data from backups on-demand while restoring in the background, or Virtual Database to access data or objects in backups instantly without restoring.
  • Backups can be stored for both on-premise SQL Servers and in the Cloud including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Simple Storage Service (S3), and Microsoft Azure Blob.

HOW IDERA PRODUCTS ADDRESS SPECIFIC FERPA REQUIREMENTS

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IDERA understands that IT doesn’t run on the network – it runs on the data and databases that power your business. That’s why we design our products with the database as the nucleus of your IT universe. Our database lifecycle management solutions allow database and IT professionals to design, monitor and manage data systems with complete confidence, whether in the cloud or on-premises. We offer a diverse portfolio of free tools and educational resources to help you do more with less while giving you the knowledge to deliver even more than you did yesterday.

Whatever your need, IDERA has a solution.