I'm curious about how IT sysadmins in schools, colleges, and universities manage the separation of student and employee accounts. I've seen some choose to create separate accounts for students and staff, while others think it's possible to manage everything using just security groups and permissions. For those who opt for a single user identity, how do you ensure that FERPA-protected student data remains distinct from information subject to FOIA requests or legal scrutiny?
5 Answers
I've noticed that most major universities operate on a single identity system per user. Having dual accounts can lead to issues, especially since staff can also be students. While it can get tricky with FERPA and FOIA, it’s generally the legal team’s responsibility to navigate that rather than IT’s, as long as you keep clear records and access control in place.
When working with higher education clients, I always recommend creating two separate accounts for security and auditing reasons. It’s crucial for maintaining data integrity and managing access effectively.
We use one account for users who are both staff and students, managing permissions through security groups. For IT security roles, we do maintain separate admin accounts. However, managing public records requests is still a challenge—having everything in one account doesn't necessarily streamline compliance; it can complicate matters since you have to sift through both types of records anyway.
At a previous job, I managed tech for K12 schools, and we ensured every user had a distinct account. We segregated staff and student accounts into different OUs based on roles and even grades, which allowed us to apply specific Group Policies for different user types. This structure helped us manage permissions and access, reducing the risk of unauthorized data exposure.
In my experience, keeping separate accounts is the way to go. It simplifies things and makes tracking much easier. We use different username formats for staff and students, which helps a lot. Plus, we organize them into separate organizational units (OUs) in Active Directory, making management a breeze.
I agree! We also keep separate email domains and naming conventions for a clear distinction.
But how do you differentiate email content? Emails could contain confidential educational information, which is still FERPA-protected.