The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) is a federal law in the United States that was enacted in 1998 to protect the privacy and personal information of children under the age of 13 who use online services. Under COPPA, websites, online services, and mobile apps that collect personal information from children under the age of 13 must obtain parental consent before collecting, using, or disclosing that information. The law also requires these services to provide parents with access to their child's personal information and the ability to delete it if they choose to do so.
COPPA also requires companies to implement reasonable data security practices to protect the confidentiality, security, and integrity of the personal information collected from children. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is responsible for enforcing COPPA and can take action against companies that violate the law, including imposing fines and other penalties. The law applies to operators of commercial websites and online services, as well as non-profit organizations and government entities.
The rest of this document is designed to help our community understand COPPA better by outlining the following information.
How it Relates to Cybersecurity
COPPA requires companies to implement reasonable data security practices to protect the personal information of children under the age of 13 who use online services, and this helps to prevent unauthorized access, theft, or loss of sensitive data, as well as protect companies from financial losses and reputational damage.
How Coro Handles Compliance for You
At Coro, we've done the research thoroughly and regularly track updates to the regulation in order to ensure that you are implementing best practices in the areas we cover when we're protecting your systems.
The following table outlines the requirements described by COPPA that Coro implements in conjunction with Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace:
Disclaimer: this table does not guarantee that your organization is compliant with these regulations. As a best practice, seek assistance from a certified auditor when completing your analysis.
| Category | Requirement | How Coro does it |
|---|---|---|
| Cloud Security & Privacy | Malware and ransomware injection | Detects and remediates malware and ransomware files in cloud drives |
| Cloud app account takeover | Monitors access to cloud apps and user/admin activities on them | |
|
Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) |
Enforces multi-factor authentication on cloud app access | |
|
Data governance over cloud drives |
Data loss prevention (DLP) for regulatory and business-sensitive data | |
| Audit and activity logs | Archives all system activities for a period of seven years, supporting referencing and auditing | |
| Email Security & Privacy | Generic and spear phishing | Detects and remediates social engineering attacks based on email content analysis |
| Identity spoofing | Detects and remediates social engineering attacks based on adaptive identity monitoring | |
| Malware and ransomware injection | Detects and remediates malware and ransomware in email attachments | |
| Email account takeover | Detects and remediates email attacks from within the organization | |
| DLP over outgoing/incoming email | Encrypts emails before they are sent, which are then decrypted by their recipients at the other end. | |
| Endpoint Security & Privacy | DLP on endpoint devices (AV) | Provides data loss prevention (DLP) for business-sensitive data and data defined as sensitive by regulations |
| Audit and activity logs | Archives all system activities for a period of seven years, supporting referencing and auditing | |
| Network Security | Virtual Firewall | Controls and monitors network traffic between virtual machines or resources hosted on the Internet. |
| Zero Trust Network Access | Identifies and authenticates users and devices seeking access to a network, regardless of whether they are inside or outside the perimeter of the network. | |
| DNS filtering | Website or content based on rules or criteria | |
| Audit and activity logs | Referencing and archiving for audit all system activities for a period of seven years. | |
| Data Governance | Data distribution governance and role management | Provides data loss prevention (DLP) for data defined as sensitive by regulations |
| PII monitoring | Monitor for Personally identifiable information, or PII, which is information that can be used to identify, contact, or distinguish one unique person from another | |
| Audit and activity logs | Archives all system activities for a period of seven years, supporting referencing and auditing |