Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA)

Job postings for PHP developers that mention the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) are typically in the education technology (EdTech) sector. FERPA is a U.S. federal law that protects the privacy of student education records. Developers in these roles build applications that handle sensitive student data in a compliant manner.

Technical Implications for PHP Developers

Working on a FERPA-compliant application requires a strong focus on security and data privacy. Your responsibilities will go beyond typical feature development to include implementing robust access control mechanisms, ensuring data encryption, and maintaining detailed audit trails. You must architect systems that prevent unauthorized access to or disclosure of personally identifiable information (PII).

Key Skills and Responsibilities

• Implementing role-based access control (RBAC).
• Securing data both in transit (TLS) and at rest (encryption).
• Writing secure PHP code resilient to common vulnerabilities.
• Understanding data anonymization techniques.
• Logging and auditing user actions for security and compliance.