Image via www.Pixel.la Free Stock Photos

With finals less than a week away, the platform where college students access assignments and study materials experienced a large-scale outage, but is now back online.  

A cybersecurity incident involving the Canvas learning management system has affected thousands of college and university campuses across the country, including several in the Central Valley.

State Center Community College District and Fresno State are both confirmed to be impacted by the breach involving Instructure, the company that operates Canvas.

Canvas is the platform where students access assignments, tests and are able to see messages from professors and classmates. 

Instructure said it became aware of the incident on May 1 and found that attackers accessed a company database that contains user information. Some of the exposed data includes names, email addresses, student ID numbers and messages exchanged in Canvas. 

The company said that there is no indication that passwords, Social Security numbers, financial information or date of birth were at risk.

Out of caution, the State Center Community College District ordered a districtwide password reset for users. The district also shortly got rid of Canvas access from its MyPortal system while officials made sure that the platform was safe to use again. 

In a campuswide message to Fresno State students, Vice President for Information Technology and Chief Information Officer Bao Johri said the university activated its business continuity plan to minimize disruption during the outage.

“Additional guidance will be provided to faculty to support flexibility for students who need to make up Canvas-related course assignments affected by the interruption,” Johri said. 

Fresno State issued the following message to students on Instagram Friday afternoon:

“Canvas is currently available and accessible. Instructure has restored Canvas services, and the platform is now back online,” the post read. “Faculty will contact their students to provide details about their specific courses as needed.”

It also warned the students against phishing attempts referencing the Canvas breach.