Introduction: Compliance Is About Responsibility
When a vendor says their tool is “used by 10,000 educational institutions,” it sounds safe. So many institutions trust them. It must be compliant.
That inference is wrong.
A tool being widely used doesn’t make it compliance-ready. It makes it popular. Popularity and compliance are different things. A tool can be great for quick meetings and terrible for institutional education. A tool can be widely used for non-core functions and risky for core functions.
Compliance is about institutional responsibility, not vendor popularity. An institution using a third-party tool remains fully responsible for data governance, student privacy, and regulatory adherence.
This article is for senior leadership, compliance officers, and IT security heads. It explains why third-party tools introduce compliance risk in education, why widespread use doesn’t equal compliance-readiness, and how institutions should think about risk exposure.
Why Education Has Unique Compliance Exposure
Education institutions hold data about minors or individuals who are legally dependent (students). That data—names, grades, assessment results, learning patterns, video/audio of students—is heavily regulated.
FERPA or equivalent regulations require that institutions control access to student educational records. That’s a direct responsibility of the institution. The institution can’t outsource that responsibility to a vendor.
Data protection regulations (GDPR in the EU, similar laws elsewhere) require that institutions understand where personal data is stored, who has access, and how it’s processed. For a third-party tool, the institution is responsible for knowing and enforcing these requirements.
Recording consent is a legal requirement in many jurisdictions. Recording someone without their knowledge is illegal in many places. Recording a student requires consent—affirmative consent in many regions. The institution is responsible for obtaining and documenting that consent.
Incident response is an institutional responsibility. If a third-party tool is compromised and student data is exposed, the institution has to investigate, notify affected parties, and report to regulators. The institution is liable, even if the vendor caused the problem.
These aren’t risks the institution can push onto the vendor. They’re inherent to running education.
Where Third-Party Tools Create Risk
Data location ambiguity. A vendor stores recordings “in the cloud.” The institution doesn’t know where. Recordings might be replicated to servers in jurisdictions where data protection is weaker. A data protection audit asks: “Where is student data stored?” The institution can’t answer definitively.
Access visibility gaps. A vendor stores recordings with “secure access.” The institution doesn’t know who, at the vendor, can access recordings. Are vendor employees reviewing content? Do vendor shareholders have access to aggregate data? The institution’s responsibility for student data includes understanding this.
Recording control mismatch. The vendor’s tool records “everything” by default. The institution wants fine-grained control: record video but not audio for certain classes, or record for this section but not that section. The tool doesn’t allow it. The institution is now recording more data than it intends to.
Retention policy misalignment. The institution’s policy is to delete recordings after one year. The vendor’s tool retains data indefinitely unless manually deleted. A course recording from three years ago still exists, even though institutional policy says it shouldn’t. The institution is out of compliance.
Audit trail absence. The tool doesn’t provide audit logs. The institution can’t answer: “Who downloaded this recording? When? From where?” Auditors ask these questions. The institution can’t answer. That’s a compliance gap.
Consent documentation failure. The tool doesn’t integrate with the institution’s consent mechanism. The institution has a form where students consent to recording. But the tool has its own consent settings that might be different. Confusion and non-compliance result.
Integration with institutional accountability systems. The tool doesn’t integrate with enrollment, so access to recordings isn’t automatically revoked when a student withdraws. The tool doesn’t integrate with the student information system, so there’s no single source of truth about who should have access.
Why These Risks Go Unnoticed
These compliance gaps often remain invisible until they’re exposed.
Decentralized usage. Faculty adopt the tool independently. The institution doesn’t have visibility. One department is using it for core classes. Another is using it for optional webinars. The institution doesn’t realize it’s using the tool for core academic records.
Lack of formal review. The institution never conducted a formal compliance assessment of the tool. Nobody asked: “Is this tool approved for education data?” The tool just got adopted because it was easy and convenient.
Scalability creates invisibility. When a tool is used by three faculty members, the compliance risk is low and localized. When it’s used by 50 faculty members and hundreds of students, the risk is high and distributed. By the time the institution realizes the scale, compliance issues have accumulated.
Incident-driven discovery. The institution doesn’t discover risks until something goes wrong. A student is upset about privacy. A vendor is acquired and privacy policies change. A data breach occurs. Then, suddenly, the institution realizes it has compliance exposure.
What Institutions Are Responsible For
Even with a third-party tool:
Institutional data governance. The institution is responsible for knowing what data the tool holds, where it’s stored, who can access it, and how long it’s kept. This responsibility doesn’t transfer to the vendor.
Student consent. The institution is responsible for obtaining informed consent before recording students. This responsibility doesn’t transfer to the vendor.
Compliance adherence. If the tool violates data protection regulations or FERPA, the institution is liable. The vendor might be liable too, but the institution doesn’t escape responsibility.
Access control. The institution is responsible for ensuring that only authorized people access recordings. The tool might be poorly designed for access control, but the institution is still responsible for governance.
Incident response. If data is exposed, the institution is responsible for investigating, notifying affected parties, and reporting to regulators. The vendor’s cooperation helps, but the institution’s responsibility is absolute.
How Institutions Can Reduce Exposure
Formal tool approval process. Institutions should require that tools intended for education data go through a compliance review. Does the tool meet data protection requirements? Is data storage known and acceptable? Are audit logs available? Approval isn’t given casually.
Limited-scope deployment. If a tool is used, it’s used for low-risk contexts initially. Not core classes, not permanent records, not sensitive assessment data. The institution pilots the tool in a controlled context and validates compliance before broader use.
Vendor contract clarity. The institution’s agreement with the vendor should specify: data location, access restrictions, audit trail requirements, data deletion timelines, and incident notification processes. The contract is clear and enforces the institution’s governance requirements.
Regular compliance audits. The institution audits usage periodically. Which classes are using the tool? Where is data stored? Who has access? Are policies being followed? Audits surface drift.
Governance alignment. The institution evaluates: Does this tool support our governance model, or does it create workarounds? If a tool makes governance harder, it’s worth reconsidering.
Conclusion
Compliance is about institutional responsibility, not vendor trustworthiness.
A tool used by thousands of institutions might be fine for those institutions’ non-core uses. It might still be non-compliant for an institution using it for core academic records. The institution can’t assume that widespread adoption means compliance-readiness.
Third-party tools introduce compliance risk when institutions don’t maintain clear governance, don’t enforce access control, don’t understand data location, or don’t document consent. These risks are manageable with deliberate choices, but they require the institution to stay responsible and vigilant.
Institutions that treat compliance as an afterthought—”We’ll deal with it if auditors ask”—discover compliance exposure too late. Institutions that treat compliance as a upfront responsibility evaluate tools carefully, limit risky usage, and maintain clear governance.
The tool doesn’t determine compliance. The institution’s choices do.