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Four Compliance Frameworks, One Security Team. How Universities Can Stop Drowning in Regulatory Risk

Part 2 of a Rapid7 series on higher-education security examines how four overlapping compliance regimes — FERPA (24-hour Federal Student Aid breach notification), GLBA Safeguards Rule (law-enforcement notification at 500+ affected consumers), HIPAA (60-day HHS breach reporting), and CMMC Level 2 (110 NIST 800-171 practices for DoD-funded research) — collide during a single incident at decentralized, multi-campus university systems. It argues that fragmented data stores and governance make it hard to quickly scope which regulated data (financial aid, health records, CUI) was touched and which reporting clocks have started, and recommends consistent data classification plus centralized visibility/automation to meet overlapping deadlines.