KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (Story courtesy of WVLT) – Knox County Schools and the University of Tennessee have confirmed they experienced a recent cybersecurity incident involving the platform Canvas that’s also affecting schools nationwide.
UT officials said Instructure, Canvas’ parent company, notified the Office of Innovative Technologies of a data breach associated with some accounts. Based on what Instructure found, the data involved appears to include personal information.
At this time, Instructure has found no indication that passwords, dates of birth, government identifiers or financial information were involved.
According to KCS, when users logged in, some received an unauthorized message.
“Cybersecurity incidents like this have become increasingly common across organizations of all types, including school systems, businesses and government agencies,” KCS said. “While no system can ever be completely immune from bad actors, we take the protection of information and systems seriously and have established protocols in place to respond quickly when concerns arise.”
KCS said they understand this may have caused concern, but at this time, there is no additional action that needs to be taken. If any action is needed, KCS will communicate directly with those affected.
KCS Superintendent Dr. Jon Rysewyk says despite the outage, the school days will still go on.
“The students will still be in class and in person and the teachers, you know, we’ve had days before, unfortunately, where there’s been internet problems and we’ve still had instruction,” Rysewyk said. “So, I think it would be very similar to that. We won’t be using that one tool in the classroom but we have a whole lot of other tools that we can use. We’re not completely dependent on that for instruction.”
According UT, Instructure has shut down Canvas and it is unknown when service will be restored. Officials said the university will send a non-emergency alert when Canvas is back online.
“You know, we put everything in Canvas. So, you know, students are nervous. Students are worried. I’m sure, you know, faculty are nervous about what to do,” said Joe Stabb, assistant professor of practice at UT. “What I’ve been telling all of my students that have contacted me is that, you know, these things, unfortunately, happen in our world today. They shouldn’t stress out and they shouldn’t worry only because, well, once things come back online, once we know what the path forward is, you know, you’ll be communicated as such.”
According to UTAlert sent out on Thursday evening, because of the Canvas outage, all exams on Friday have been postponed. The alert went on to say faculty, staff and students will get more information on Friday about a revised schedule.
“I think that was definitely the right call of administration. You know, students are already nervous about, you know, taking 8 a.m. exams and if all of their content is in Canvas, they can’t log in to study,” Stabb said. “So, that was a very good call just to, you know, let’s postpone.”
Instructure will be sharing updates on their status page.
