Your School Records May Have Been Exposed: Canvas Data Breach Continues to Unfold

Canvas, a widely used online learning platform owned by Instructure, suffered a data breach that is taking much longer to investigate than anyone anticipated. Schools and colleges across the country use Canvas for online classes, assignments, and grade tracking. The company is still working through June and into July to figure out exactly what information was exposed at each school, and they are now beginning to share findings with affected institutions. If your child's school or your college uses Canvas, there's a possibility that student information, parent contact details, grades, assignments, or other educational records were exposed in this breach. The company has been asking schools to designate a security contact to receive specific information about what data was affected at their institution. Because the investigation has taken months, many families are still waiting to learn the full scope of what happened.

Here's what you should do right now:

1. Contact your school or college directly and ask if they have received information from Canvas/Instructure about the breach. Ask specifically what data was affected.
2. Watch for any communication from your school about the breach. Make sure you're checking both email and the school's regular communication channels.
3. Be extremely cautious about any emails or messages claiming to be from your school or Canvas. Scammers often take advantage of breaches to send fake messages asking for passwords or personal information.
4. If your child uses the same password for Canvas as they do for other sites, change those passwords immediately on all other accounts.
5. Monitor for any suspicious activity related to your child's identity or your family's information. This ongoing situation shows why it's important to treat school technology accounts seriously. Help your children use strong, unique passwords for their school accounts. Talk to them about not sharing login information with friends. Ask your school what steps they're taking to protect student data and what security measures they require from vendors like Canvas. Remember that educational technology companies hold sensitive information about our children, and we have a right to ask questions about how that data is protected.