Orig Canvas Incident

Instructure, the company that supports our Canvas learning management system and a provider to thousands of colleges and universities worldwide, has alerted customers to an external security incident. Instructure’s investigation into their incident is currently ongoing. At this time, Bryant’s Canvas instance remains available and operational for Students and Faculty. Please note, Bryant’s network was not impacted in any way by Instructure’s incident.  This incident was not directed at Bryant University. This is a vendor-level event that impacted multiple institutions. 

What Happened  

Instructure (Canvas) experienced a criminal cybersecurity breach in which a threat actor accessed data associated with customer accounts. User information was involved, though no passwords, date of birth, government IDs, or financial data are affected.  For the latest official information from Instructure, visit their site.

What Bryant University has done and continues to do  

• Audited administrative roles for any unnecessary access or activity including unusual login locations or failed attempts.  
• Confirmed Multi-Factor Authentication on all privileged/admin accounts.  
• Reset Canvas-related admin passwords.  
• Activated our Incident Response Plan and have engaged insurance, security, and legal teams.  
• Engaged our Security Operations Center (SOC) to increase focused monitoring.  
• Reviewed third-party integrations including API access.  
• We will continue monitoring for suspicious activity, including phishing attempts, unusual messages, and abnormal system behavior.  

What you should do  

• Users should avoid clicking Canvas-related links in emails or texts and instead access Canvas directly through the official portal.  
• Report anything suspicious to the Bryant University IT Service Desk at 401-232-6111 (x6111) or via email at ITServiceDesk@bryant.edu.  

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What happened/How did this happen/When did this happen?
   
   We recently learned that Instructure, the company that supports our Canvas learning management information system, experienced a security incident affecting a significant number of educational institutions. Instructure further advised that they are working with third-party specialists to investigate the incident and to determine what information may have been affected. Instructure has stated that the potentially affected information does not include government issued identification information or financial information. Importantly, we can confirm that this incident is limited to the Canvas platform and does not affect the security or availability of our own network. We await updates from Instructure and can provide additional updates once available. 
    
2. Has any information been compromised?
   
   Instructure has advised that they continue to investigate, but to date, they have found no indication that passwords, dates of birth, government identifiers, or financial information were involved. We await further communication from Instructure regarding what information may have been impacted, and we will provide additional updates as required.  

3. Why wasn’t notification of this incident provided sooner?

   Since this incident occurred at Instructure, and with the Canvas platform, we await further updates from Instructure regarding what occurred and what specific information may have been affected. We will provide additional relevant updates once available.    

4. What is Instructure/Canvas doing to address this? What is being done to ensure that this does not happen again?

   Instructure advised that they engaged a third-party forensics firm to investigate and notified law enforcement. They also took additional technical steps to address the vulnerabilities identified in the investigation.