Security
Family data deserves
a careful home.
How Pearsight protects what you bring in — at the database, at the network, in our business model, and in how we work with security researchers.
Student-privacy laws
Student-privacy laws (FERPA / COPPA).
Pearsight today is a family-purchased product, not a school-contracted one. A parent or caregiver subscribes on behalf of their own kids and brings their parent-side Canvas connection into Pearsight. That's the deployment model the product runs on today—it doesn't foreclose Pearsight working under a school contract in the future, but it shapes how student-privacy laws apply to what's happening right now.
For COPPA, the verifiable-parental-consent step is built into the signup flow. The paying parent (18 or older) creates the family account, and that account creation is itself the parent's consent for any child under 13 that the parent then enrolls. Children do not sign up to Pearsight on their own—there is no student signup path; nor is there a child "account". A child only reaches Pearsight through a parent-issued pair code (unique URL), and that pairing is something the parent controls and can revoke at any time.
Regardless of whether Pearsight ever enters a school-contract relationship, the data-handling controls Pearsight applies are aligned with FERPA's spirit: Postgres row-level security so a family's records never leak to another family, AES-256-GCM encryption of Canvas tokens, a subscription-only business model with no ad targeting and no data resale, and scoped caregiver invites that grant only the access the inviting parent chose. The controls are the same whether you're a family using Pearsight on your own or, a family whose school district has signed an agreement to use it.
Your data, your row
Postgres row-level security on every query.
Our database implements best-in-class row-level security policies that scope every read and every write to a single family account. There is no "admin path" that lets an engineer browse customer dashboards—the database itself refuses to return another family's rows, even if a database query goes wrong.
Every caregiver invite, every co-parent join, and every child pairing code creates a row in a table that grants ONLY the access intended. Nothing more.
Encryption first
AES-256-GCM is military grade encryption and authentication.
At Pearsight, we use AES-256-GCM as the standard. That means that your Canvas access tokens are encrypted at rest with AES-256-GCM using a per-row data encryption key, with the master key held outside the database. The token only appears long enough to issue a single Canvas request, then it leaves memory.
Pearsight cannot submit assignments, message teachers, or change grades—the Canvas API token Pearsight requests gets assignment data only. If Canvas ever rotates token formats, Pearsight rotates with them; tokens never linger past their 120-day refresh window.
Credit card details are processed with strict PCI DSS Compliance, on a secure server, with end-to-end encryption.
We don't sell ads
Subscription is the only revenue source.
Pearsight has one business model: families pay a subscription—that's it. No ad targeting, no data brokers, no analytics resold to third parties, no "anonymous insights" piped to a marketing partner that resells your data. The data your family puts into Pearsight stays inside Pearsight's database boundary.
Operational telemetry like error reports, performance metrics, deployment health—they're all collected through tooling that doesn't see your data. None of it carries assignment text, student names, or grade values, or anything tied to your children.
Coordinated disclosure
Found something? Tell us at security@pearsight.com.
Pearsight runs a coordinated-disclosure program for security researchers. Email security@pearsight.com with a reproducer and we'll acknowledge inside one business day, triage the issue, and credit you in our acknowledgments unless you'd rather stay anonymous.
Default disclosure window is 90 days from acknowledgment, extendable for genuinely complex issues. We don't litigate good-faith research; we welcome it.
FERPA stance
Where Pearsight sits relative to school records.
In Pearsight's deployment model, your Canvas data flows entirely through your account. You hold the Canvas authorization, and you control what Pearsight accesses. This places Pearsight on the family side of the privacy boundary drawn by FERPA, rather than within a school district's vendor ecosystem.
While FERPA governs how educational institutions and their contracted vendors handle student records, a parent-purchased Pearsight subscription is a private personal tool. Under FERPA, parents have the legal right to inspect their children's educational records—connecting your Canvas account to Pearsight is simply an exercise of that right for your family's daily use.
If a school or district requires specific documentation regarding parent-managed integrations, or if your district ever wished to explore a formal arrangement, our strict data isolation and zero-monetization controls remain unchanged. Contact us anytime at privacy@pearsight.com and we will gladly provide whatever documentation your school requires.