Sector(s)

Team Members

Amet lenis, salimlakhani

Project Team

  • Kaplan Development Team – Focused on building and enhancing the student portal’s educational features.

  • DevPanel DevOps Team – Delivered Azure automation, Infrastructure-as-Code, HIPAA compliance, and 24/7 operational support.

  • Contracted Developers – Onboarded securely through DevPanel without requiring direct Azure account access

Learn more https://tidycal.com/devpanel

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Organizations Involved

Community contributions

The Kaplan project highlights how DevPanel’s automation extends Drupal’s impact into regulated, enterprise environments:

  • Proof of Drupal in HIPAA Workflows: Demonstrates that Drupal can power student-facing applications in a HIPAA-compliant Azure architecture, offering a model for healthcare and education organizations.

  • Reusable Infrastructure Patterns: The Infrastructure-as-Code, multi-environment provisioning, and compliance frameworks used here can be adapted by other Drupal teams facing strict regulatory standards.

  • Lowering Adoption Barriers: By automating Azure, DevPanel enables smaller teams to confidently use Drupal in enterprise-grade, compliant infrastructures without requiring deep DevOps expertise.

  • Knowledge Sharing: Case studies and event sponsorships spread lessons learned, helping Drupal agencies and nonprofits replicate Kaplan’s success in their own compliance-driven projects

Kaplan Early Learning Company, a leader in early childhood education products and services, needed to migrate its student portal to Microsoft Azure under strict HIPAA compliance requirements. The project required multiple environments (dev, test, stage, prod), secure API integrations, and robust disaster recovery—all while meeting tight academic year deadlines and working with limited internal DevOps resources.

By adopting DevPanel’s automation platform, Kaplan reduced Azure setup time from 3–4 weeks to under 30 minutes, dynamically provisioned HIPAA-compliant environments, and embedded security monitoring across all layers. The migration was completed in weeks rather than months, freeing developers to focus on building educational solutions instead of managing infrastructure.

The result: Kaplan met its deadline, improved compliance and scalability, reduced costs by avoiding additional DevOps hiring, and established a long-term technology partnership with DevPanel to support continued innovation

About the project

Goals
Kaplan Early Learning Company set out to migrate its student portal into its own Microsoft Azure account with strict HIPAA compliance. The goals were to:

  • Protect sensitive student data with enterprise-grade security.

  • Create a multi-environment architecture (dev, test, staging, production).

  • Build secure API endpoints for integrations with existing educational applications.

  • Ensure scalability to handle fluctuating student loads.

  • Meet an academic year launch deadline while keeping developers focused on building educational solutions.

Requirements
The project required:

  • A HIPAA-compliant architecture across all environments.

  • Automated provisioning via Infrastructure-as-Code (Terraform, HELM, Ansible).

  • Integrated security frameworks tied to Microsoft Defender for Cloud.

  • Backup, disaster recovery, and monitoring systems.

  • A DevOps partner to accelerate Azure adoption without adding internal headcount.

Outcome
With DevPanel, Kaplan transformed a complex Azure migration into a streamlined deployment:

  • Setup time cut by 95% – from 3–4 weeks of manual Azure configuration to under 30 minutes.

  • Dynamic environments – dev, test, and staging sites provisioned in minutes.

  • Built-in HIPAA compliance – automated security scans, audit trails, and access controls.

  • Operational savings – 20–40 hours per month saved through automation.

  • On-time delivery – Kaplan met its academic year deadline with a secure, scalable student portal.

The project gave Kaplan a future-proof, compliant cloud infrastructure while freeing its developers to focus on innovation in educational technology

Why Drupal was chosen

Kaplan needed a CMS that could securely handle sensitive student data, integrate with multiple educational applications, and remain flexible as their digital needs grew. Drupal was selected because:

  • Security & Compliance: Drupal’s strong security track record and compatibility with HIPAA safeguards made it a trusted foundation for the student portal.

  • Flexibility & Extensibility: Its modular architecture allowed seamless integration with APIs and third-party educational tools.

  • Scalability: Combined with DevPanel and Azure, Drupal could scale dynamically to support varying student loads.

  • Community & Longevity: As an open-source platform with a large ecosystem, Drupal provided long-term sustainability and access to community best practices.

With Drupal at the core and DevPanel managing Azure automation, Kaplan gained a future-proof, compliant platform that empowered its developers to focus on creating educational solutions instead of cloud infrastructure

Technical Specifications

Drupal version:

Key modules/theme/distribution used:

Why these modules/theme/distribution were chosen

The modules and theme were selected to balance security, compliance, and ease of use for Kaplan’s educational portal while aligning with HIPAA requirements:

  • Drupal Core & Views – Offered a flexible, enterprise-grade CMS framework to build dynamic listings of resources, classes, and content.

  • Webform – Provided a secure way to collect sensitive data from students and educators while remaining extensible for program needs.

  • Media/CKEditor – Allowed non-technical staff to manage documents, images, and multimedia content with minimal training.

  • Pathauto & Redirect – Ensured professional, SEO-friendly URLs for better accessibility and navigation across educational resources.

  • Security Kit & reCAPTCHA – Strengthened protection against bots, spam, and OWASP Top 10 threats—critical in a HIPAA-regulated environment.

  • Custom Educational Theme – Delivered a compliant, accessible, mobile-first design to meet the needs of diverse users (students, educators, administrators).

  • Azure Integrations (via DevPanel) – Connected Drupal directly into Azure’s HIPAA-compliant infrastructure, ensuring logging, monitoring, and security enforcement without custom overhead.

These choices ensured Kaplan’s developers could focus on innovative educational features while maintaining compliance, scalability, and long-term sustainability