The difference between a good and great education is the difference between simply regurgitating facts and applying concepts in the real world.
If you’re a K-12 school administrator or a leader in higher education, you’re well aware of FERPA, the Family Educational Rights & Privacy Act. You understand that it’s your institution’s professional responsibility and legal obligation to protect against unauthorized disclosures of personally identifiable information (PII) from students’ education records.
Those are the facts of the matter. But are you applying the necessary real-world concepts to prevent data breaches?
Steel City Shredding is the FERPA-compliant shredding service to partner with if you’re serious about shielding your school district, college, or university from data theft.
How FERPA Relates to Secure Document Disposal
FERPA is a federal law that affords parents the following rights:
- The right to access their children’s education records
- The right to seek to have the records amended
- The right to have some control over the disclosure of personally identifiable information (PII) from the records
When a student turns 18 years old, or enters a postsecondary institution at any age, the rights under FERPA transfer from the parents to the student,
Data Sanitization Methods Under FERPA
While FERPA does not mandate specific methods of data destruction, it emphatically notes that “the permanent and irreversible destruction of data is a cornerstone of protecting the privacy and security of students’ education records.”
The Information Technology Laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology has created Guidelines for Media Sanitization (NIST 800-88) covering hard copy and electronic data. The methodology boils down to three points for protecting sensitive data: clear, purge, and destroy.
The third plank of this methodology, “Destroy,” is our area of expertise at Steel City Shredding. NIST 800-88 cites shredding as an effective data sanitization method, and our FERPA-compliant shredding services are a secure, convenient, and reliable means to destroy paper documents, files, and electronic storage media.
Penalties for FERPA Violations
With great knowledge comes great responsibility, and academic institutions must take great care to comply with FERPA. The Student Privacy Policy Office (SPPO) within the U.S. Department of Education conducts investigations into alleged violations and can levy serious legal penalties depending on the degree of noncompliance, including:
- Withholding further payments under any applicable program
- Issuing a complaint to compel compliance through a cease and desist order
- Terminating eligibility to receive funding under any applicable program
Third-party vendors who serve educational institutions, like virtual learning platforms, must also comply with FERPA. Unauthorized disclosures can result in a 5-year ban from accessing student records.
The simple act of arranging a scheduled shredding service from Steel City Shredding goes a long way toward avoiding the reputational damage, financial loss, and enrollment decline that can accompany a data breach.
Common Shredding Oversights
While cybersecurity breaches earn the most headlines, the threat of physical data breaches is not to be ignored, and its impact is no less severe. Using halfway measures to dispose of sensitive student records is the quickest way to put your school district or academic institution at an increased risk of a data breach. Here are a few of those halfway measures.
- Tossing sensitive documents in the regular trash or recycling
The documents containing student data may be “gone and forgotten” in your mind, but out of sight and out of mind doesn’t mean they’re safe from exposure.
A health science university learned this the hard way. A team member working from home on a recruitment project printed out job applications and resumes full of personally identifiable information (PII). The team member later put them in a home recycling bin. Wind gusts tipped the bin over, and the documents were exposed.
- Using store-bought shredders
Retail shredders may not have the capacity to completely destroy paper student records, nor can they shred hard drives or e-waste. They tie up school staff in time spent feeding the documents into the shredder. If the documents are in folders, stapled, or bound, staff will spend even more hours in manual prep before they can be inserted into the shredder.
Store-bought machines are also not as powerful as our industrial shredders at Steel City Shredding and might not possess the specs to render the paper into totally unrecognizable pieces.
Plus, if you use an in-office shredder, where are all your shreddings going? For them to be fully secured, you must have them recycled rather than simply placing them in the regular recycling bin.
These nuances often go overlooked and place your school or institution at risk of FERPA violations.
- No locked storage bins
An underappreciated aspect of secure disposal of sensitive paper documents and e-waste is the chain of custody: the documented trail of possession from when the documents are collected until their final destruction.
The essential link in that chain is the locked storage bin(s). It creates a single, centralized source for everyone to place sensitive documents into. (If you have multiple departments, you can establish multiple points with locked storage bins for convenience).
When there’s different processes in place (or no process at all), it makes it difficult to verify the chain of custody and generates the conditions for documents to be lost, stolen, or exposed.
Relying on school staff to perform the shredding process does not maintain airtight security either, because they may not have the proper training. And unfortunately, there is the reality of insider threats. Many physical data breaches involving paper and electronics occur from internal staff with the knowledge and access.
To secure your chain of custody, partner with a FERPA-compliant paper and e-waste shredding service like Steel City Shredding. We’ll equip your school or academic institution with locked storage bins to set up around your office and buildings. This arrangement removes unnecessary links in the chain of custody and ensures that independent, certified Steel City Shredding specialists are handling the destruction process.
What Makes Schools A ‘Soft Target’ for Data Breaches?
Data thieves seek targets of opportunity, searching out vulnerabilities and operational laxity.
The educational sector has become the fifth most targeted industry for security breaches in the U.S.
According to Deepstrike, academia is “target rich and cyber poor” because many organizations possess an abundance of records with valuable data and lack the infrastructure or resources to counter these threats.
While hackings, phishing emails, and ransomware draw the most concern, physical breaches from paper documents and decommissioned electronics can wreak just as much havoc. That’s because the information gleaned from physical media can be manipulated and integrated into cyberattacks and social engineering efforts.
Our physical and digital world have been blended, and as a result, any school or university’s security efforts must take both into account.
3 Reasons Why K-12 School Districts Are in the Crosshairs
Data thieves covet the personally identifiable information (PII) of minors. Parents of students often set up identity theft monitoring for their own credit scores and personal information, but they may not do the same for their children.
Armed with a young student’s info, a malicious actor can exploit it by opening up bank accounts, applying for loans, or selling it on the dark web. According to Government Technology’s Center for Digital Education, K-12 schools accounted for 74% of the security attacks reported in 2025.
The top three reasons explaining the K-12 exposures are:
- Lack of Budget
- Lack of Training
- Lack of Security Infrastructure
This “trilemma” of factors can leave a school district reeling. The U.S. Government Accountability Office found that a breach can cost school systems anywhere from $50,000 to $1 million after a breach.
Higher Ed Facing Highest Threat Levels Yet
Colleges and universities are sprawling learning networks, with some large enough to be small cities. Over the past five years, higher education has become a focal point for data thieves, because one breach can give them a king’s ransom. Last year, several notable institutions fell victim to attacks.
- Harvard University (2025) – 1.3 terabytes of archived files stolen, enough to contain millions of documents
- Dartmouth College (2025) – 99,596 people affected
- University of Pennsylvania (2025) – 46,491 people affected
- University of Phoenix (2025) – 3.5 million people affected Columbia University (2025) – 868,969 people affected
Regardless of size, a post-secondary school is at risk for these reasons:
- Millions of data points containing personally identifiable information (PII)
- Confidential Intellectual Property (IP)
- Financial data of students, faculty, staff, and vendors
With so many people, paper, and electronics moving through colleges, the likelihood of a breach rises exponentially. Besides criminal hacker groups, foreign adversaries target higher education in physical breaches because they often possess trade secrets, sensitive technology, and privileged information from research and partnerships with private businesses or government entities.
The fallout from data breaches is particularly intense in higher ed. Operations grind to a halt while the breach is assessed, contained, and countered. Negative media coverage damages the school’s image. Donors think twice about major gifts and endowments. Enrollment drops. Research grants and opportunities for private sector collaboration dry up. Legal action from FERPA violations may lead to even more funding restrictions.
Paper and e-waste shredding, then, becomes an important moat in your physical data protection efforts.
The Gold Standard for FERPA-Compliant Document Destruction
In addition to being FERPA-compliant, Steel City Shredding complies with all known data protection laws, including HIPAA and GLBA, which apply to student healthcare services and financial services like student loans and payment processing.
The basis of any claim is the evidence behind it. Here’s ours.
i-SIGMA NAID AAA Certification
Those acronyms may not mean much to you at first glance, but an i-SIGMA NAID AAA Certification is the data protection industry’s gold standard accreditation.
It verifies our compliance with all known data protection laws, as mentioned earlier. Steel City Shredding has earned and continues to maintain the certification through scheduled and surprise audits by third-party security professionals, ongoing training, and rigorous hiring practices.
When we handle your sensitive documents and e-waste, you know it’s in the hands of true professionals.
One case study offers a stark example of the difference between a regular shredding company and a NAID AAA certified shredding company. A Portland-area community college contracted with a disposal service, only to find later that the shredding company had dumped the records in a public landfill and was not certified. The Department of Education sanctioned the college, which affected its funding.
Mobile, On-Site Shredding
The Steel City Shredding mobile shredding truck will come to your campus and perform all FERPA-compliant shredding services there for student records, electronics, and e-waste. You can witness the destruction firsthand and will receive an official certificate of destruction.
Whether you need us for a periodic file purge or a more regular scheduled shredding service, Steel City Shredding can work with you to plan out the best cadence for your school.
Hard-Drive & e-Waste Shredding
Learning environments in 2026 are digitally-driven and tech-enabled. Discarding electronics at the end of their lifecycle in the regular trash poses a security risk, not to mention threat to the environment.
Our industrial shredders can completely destroy all kinds of data-storing electronics, including:
- Hard drives and solid state drives
- Laptops, computers, and tablets
- Cell phones
- Printers and copiers
- Servers and networking equipment
- USB drives and storage media
After shredding the electronics, all the eligible materials, such as precious metals and circuitry, are securely and responsibly recycled. Additionally, 100% of shredded paper is recycled.
On-Campus Shredding Events
Data security can be a teachable moment for students of all ages.
Steel City Shredding can host an on-site shredding event at your local school district. Younger students can learn about the importance of protecting their personal data and teachers can use it as an object lesson. Plus, it can be a fun experience for them to see the destruction firsthand through the closed-circuit camera system mounted on the side of the truck.
We can also host shredding events at a college or university, giving professors, students, and faculty the opportunity to get rid of old files and electronics in a one-time purge.
Scanning Services
If your school district or college is undergoing a digitization project of old books, files, and research, Steel City Shredding provides professional scanning services.
Our expert team will prep your files, scan the documents, and convert them into high-quality PDF files organized according to your preferences. We’ll return the files to you in the form of an encrypted hard drive, giving you the ability to integrate them with your learning systems and content management systems.
Schedule Your FERPA Appraisal
Creating a safe and secure learning environment is top of mind for every educational administrator. Steel City Shredding can consult with your team to identify areas of need and form a paper shredding and e-waste disposal plan that will help maintain your FERPA compliance.
Call 412-496-1240 to learn more or book a discovery call here.