FILE - A participant uses two laptops during a final cyber security competition. (Tomohiro Ohsumi/Getty Images)
NEW YORK - New York City school officials are investigating potential data privacy issues amid the widespread outage and cybersecurity incident involving Canvas, a learning management platform used by thousands of educational institutions nationwide.
What is Canvas?
The backstory:
The disruption comes days after Canvas’ parent company, Instructure, disclosed a "cybersecurity incident perpetrated by a criminal threat actor."
The company said it deployed software patches and temporarily placed the platform, along with its beta and test environments, into maintenance mode as it worked to address the issue.
Who are the ShinyHunters?
A hacking group has reportedly claimed responsibility for both the cyber incident and the outage, and is threatening to release student data, though the extent of any breach remains unclear.
Students and educators across the country began reporting problems accessing Canvas on Thursday, with some unable to view grades, assignments and other course materials.
The University of Florida told students the outage was affecting more than 8,000 educational institutions worldwide.
NYC Schools
In New York City, schools officials said they are investigating potential data privacy issues tied to the situation.
"New York City Public Schools places a premium on the protection of student data and use of technology, and devotes significant resources to doing so," Schools Chancellor Kamar H. Samuels said in a statement. "In line with that, we act quickly and urgently when we learn of a potential breach."
Samuels said the school system is working with vendors, law enforcement and NYC Cyber Command as it assesses the scope of the issue.
Officials did not immediately specify which schools were affected or whether any student data in New York City had been compromised.
It was not immediately clear when full access to Canvas would be restored for all users.
Is Canvas still down?
At Columbia University, officials said Friday morning that Instructure has restored access to Canvas/CourseWorks for most institutions, but the platform remains unavailable to Columbia users as the university conducts its own review. Columbia University Information Technology said it is assessing the security and stability of the system before restoring access locally. Officials added they will continue to closely monitor the situation and provide updates as more information becomes available.
Rutgers Canvas
At Rutgers University, officials said the school is evaluating next steps following disruptions to Canvas during a critical exam period. The university acknowledged that exams, project submissions and other coursework may have been impacted by the outage, noting that thousands of institutions worldwide are dealing with similar issues. Rutgers said it will share additional updates with students, faculty and staff as more information becomes available.
The Source: This report is based on information from the NYC Schools Chancellor.