Industries We Serve
AWS Consulting for Education and EdTech
FERPA-compliant AWS infrastructure for K-12 districts, universities, and edtech companies: student data protection, LMS scaling, and video streaming for modern learning platforms.
What we do
FERPA and COPPA compliant AWS for education.
FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) governs how educational institutions handle student education records including grades, attendance, disciplinary records, and personally identifiable information (PII). For cloud-hosted educational platforms, FERPA requires: limiting access to student data to authorized personnel with a legitimate educational interest, securing data with encryption and access controls, and maintaining audit logs of who accessed what data. COPPA (Children's Online Privacy Protection Act) adds additional requirements for platforms serving children under 13: parental consent for data collection, limited data retention, and restricted advertising.
On AWS, FERPA and COPPA-compliant architecture uses Amazon Cognito for role-based access control, CloudTrail for access audit logs, KMS for student data encryption, and Auto Scaling to handle demand spikes during enrollment and exam periods. Forged Concepts documents each control layer in the format education procurement teams require: which AWS service implements it, how it is configured, and how it can be verified by an auditor or district IT team.
FERPA
Student education records at K-12 and higher ed
COPPA
Children under 13: parental consent required
LMS scaling
10x traffic spikes during enrollment and exams
US data residency
Student data stays in US regions by policy
AWS services
Education platform needs mapped to AWS services.
| Need | AWS Service | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Student identity & access | Amazon Cognito | Role-based auth for students, teachers, admins; SSO with campus IdP (Okta, Azure AD, Shibboleth) |
| Global content delivery | CloudFront | Low-latency delivery of course content worldwide; reduces origin load and egress costs |
| Video streaming | AWS MediaLive + MediaStore | Live class streaming; Amazon IVS for sub-10-second interactive sessions |
| Course media storage | S3 with lifecycle policies | Video, document, and asset storage with Intelligent-Tiering for cost optimization |
| Student data (relational) | RDS / Aurora | Grades, enrollment, attendance records encrypted at rest with KMS |
| Audit trail (FERPA) | AWS CloudTrail | Who accessed student records and when. Immutable, tamper-evident logs. |
| Demand scaling | Auto Scaling + ALB | Handle enrollment spikes and exam periods without manual intervention |
| Student data encryption | AWS KMS | Encrypt PII and education records at rest across S3, RDS, and EBS |
FERPA compliance
Four technical control layers for student data protection.
Encryption
Student PII encrypted at rest using customer-managed KMS keys applied to RDS, S3, and EBS. S3 has default SSE-S3 encryption for new objects, but FERPA-grade control means using customer-managed KMS keys with explicit key policies, rotation, and CloudTrail visibility into key usage. All data in transit uses TLS on every endpoint.
Access control
Least-privilege IAM policies restricting which services and roles can read student data. Service Control Policies (SCPs) applied at the AWS Organizations level. Amazon Cognito enforces user authentication before any student record is accessible.
Audit logging
CloudTrail records every AWS API call that touches student data. CloudWatch Logs captures application-level access events. Logs must be retained for the period required by your framework and must be tamper-evident.
Data residency
FERPA does not explicitly prohibit international storage, but many state laws and district procurement policies require US-only data residency. US-only region restrictions enforced via SCPs satisfy this requirement.
FERPA vs COPPA
Two overlapping frameworks both required for K-12 edtech.
Educational institutions
Applies to K-12 schools and universities that receive federal funding. Governs access to and amendment of student education records: grades, attendance, disciplinary records, and other education-related PII. Compliance is required of the institution and by extension any vendor handling student records.
AWS controls: CloudTrail audit logs, KMS encryption, Cognito role-based access, US-region SCPs, and vendor data processing agreements via AWS Artifact.
Children under 13
Applies to any commercial website or online service that knowingly collects personal data from children under 13, regardless of institution type. Requires verifiable parental consent, strict limits on data use (no behavioral advertising, no third-party sharing without consent), and the ability to delete a child's data on request.
AWS controls: encrypted S3 and RDS with KMS, strict IAM policies preventing third-party access to under-13 data, explicit data retention and deletion workflows, no third-party analytics SDKs for under-13 sessions.
K-12 edtech companies must satisfy both frameworks simultaneously. The cost of retrofitting COPPA controls into a production system is substantially higher than building them correctly from the start.
LMS scaling
10x traffic spikes without over-provisioning baseline capacity.
Learning Management Systems face predictable but extreme traffic spikes: enrollment periods, exam weeks, back-to-school season. An LMS that handles 1,000 concurrent users during off-peak can see 10,000 during finals week, every one of them uploading an assignment or watching a video simultaneously.
Auto Scaling with pre-warming
Launch additional EC2 capacity or ECS tasks before the spike arrives, not after the alert fires. If enrollment opens every September 3rd, the scaling policy fires on September 2nd.
CloudFront caching
Cache static assets (course materials, videos, JavaScript bundles) at the CDN layer. Origin servers only receive requests that require dynamic computation. 60-80% reduction in origin load during peaks.
RDS read replicas
Route read-heavy queries (LMS dashboards, grade reports, roster lookups) to replicas, preserving write throughput on the primary instance during high-read exam periods.
ElastiCache for session management
Session data in Redis survives application server restarts and scales horizontally, avoiding the database as a session store bottleneck.
Video streaming architecture
Pre-recorded lectures
Video stored in S3, transcoded to HLS by MediaConvert for adaptive bitrate streaming, distributed via CloudFront. Students stream from the nearest edge location, which means lower latency and lower egress costs.
Live classes
Video input (RTMP or SRT) → MediaLive (transcoding, packaging) → MediaStore (low-latency origin) → CloudFront → viewer. Expected latency: 15-30 seconds.
Interactive live sessions
Sub-10-second latency requires Amazon IVS (Interactive Video Service). Forged Concepts selects the right service based on latency requirements, not a default recommendation.
How we engage
Three ways education teams bring us in.
FERPA and CIPA documentation for K-12 districts
AWS architecture and the technical evidence procurement teams require before signing: KMS encryption, Cognito role-based access, CloudTrail audit logs, US-region SCPs, and the documented control mapping district IT teams ask for.
Common when a school district is about to sign a contract and the buying decision is compliance-led, not technical.
Campus identity integration for higher education
LMS and student-systems architecture integrated with the campus IdP (Shibboleth, Azure AD, Okta), plus the security architecture review packet InfoSec teams expect on longer procurement cycles.
Common when a university VP of IT or CTO is modernizing LMS, research infrastructure, or student-facing systems on AWS.
FERPA, COPPA, and SOC 2 readiness for EdTech
AWS environments built to satisfy K-12 district legal reviews, under-13 COPPA controls, and SOC 2 Type II for procurement, with LMS scaling for semester spikes already engineered in.
Common before a first K-12 district deal, when an LMS is straining under enrollment or exam load, or when a product is expanding from under-18 users into higher education.
FAQ
Common questions about education AWS compliance.
What is FERPA compliance on AWS?
FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) requires educational institutions to protect student education records and limit access to personnel with a legitimate educational interest. On AWS, FERPA-compliant architecture requires: encryption of student data at rest (AWS KMS) and in transit (TLS), role-based access controls that limit which users can access which records (Amazon Cognito), immutable audit logs of who accessed student data and when (CloudTrail), and data retention policies that align with FERPA's record-keeping requirements.
What is the difference between FERPA and COPPA?
FERPA applies to educational institutions (K-12 schools, universities) that receive federal funding. It governs access to and amendment of student education records. COPPA applies to commercial websites and online services that knowingly collect personal data from children under 13. It requires verifiable parental consent, limited data collection, and data deletion on request. EdTech companies must comply with both: FERPA through their institutional relationships and COPPA through their direct interaction with underage users.
How do you handle LMS traffic spikes?
Learning Management Systems face predictable spikes: first day of semester, mid-term and final exam periods, and enrollment windows. Forged Concepts uses EC2 Auto Scaling groups with Application Load Balancer health checks to scale compute horizontally during peaks, CloudFront to cache static course content at the edge (reducing origin load by 60-80%), and RDS read replicas to distribute database load during peak query periods.
What AWS services are used for video streaming in education?
For live class streaming: AWS MediaLive encodes the live stream and delivers it through MediaStore or S3. For on-demand video (recorded lectures): S3 for storage, CloudFront for global delivery, and AWS Elemental MediaConvert for transcoding to adaptive bitrate formats. For interactive live sessions requiring sub-10-second latency: Amazon IVS. Forged Concepts selects the stack based on whether the use case is live-first (MediaLive) or on-demand-first (S3 + CloudFront).
Can you help with student data privacy on AWS?
Yes. Forged Concepts implements the technical controls for student data privacy: KMS encryption for all data stores containing PII, IAM roles scoped to the minimum required access for each system, CloudTrail logging of all data access events, S3 bucket policies that prevent public access, and VPC isolation for systems containing student records. We also document the technical controls in a format that satisfies institutional compliance reviews.
How do you handle cost optimization for education organizations?
Education organizations often have constrained budgets. Forged Concepts implements: Savings Plans for predictable compute workloads, S3 Intelligent-Tiering for course media that has variable access patterns, Auto Scaling that scales down to minimum capacity during summer and holidays, and Reserved Instances for stable database workloads. Typical savings of 20-35% compared to default on-demand pricing.
Can you help edtech companies with SOC 2?
Yes. EdTech companies selling to school districts and universities are increasingly required to provide SOC 2 Type II reports as part of procurement. The AWS technical foundations for SOC 2 (CloudTrail, Config, GuardDuty, Secrets Manager, and IAM documentation) overlap significantly with FERPA compliance requirements. Forged Concepts builds these foundations as part of infrastructure engagements.
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