In May 2026, the major educational technology company Instructure was hit with a massive security breach. This breach impacted a large number of institutions particularly at the worst time of year – finals. Institutions had to take Canvas completely offline (see the University of Illinois’ update page on the breach).
Working in instructional technology at an institution that does not use Canvas (whew!), I have to ask the question – if this hack happened with our classes tomorrow, would the particular college I work in be ready?
The answer: Well…we might be able to manage, maybe, somewhat…
Keep this in mind – I said the particular college I work in. I won’t speak for the University. I know our University’s IT department when it comes to adding tools to our LMS has been criticized for wanting too much security information, which is actually not a terrible thing since we’re linking a system that contains student information to an outside service!
As for my college – I recently shared a write-up with our faculty on what they could do to back up their course content. I can’t share that here, but here’s some tips I thought of that might work for everyone concerned about saving their course content.
- Download your course as a course package and save it to your secure storage. This won’t save student data, but it will get all of your files.
- Back up your gradebook, and only save it to secure storage. Don’t save to your home computer or desktop – if the institution provides FERPA-compliant file storage, save the file there.
- If you can download student assignment submissions, consider doing this and saving those to FERPA-compliant storage, but be prepared to delete them after the institution’s grade-challenge deadline passes.
- Whatever you do, do not violate FERPA. Your home computer is not the place for these backups to be stored.
I’m not suggesting being so paranoid that you’re constantly backing up everything, but regular personal backups without relying on your institution can ensure you maintain access to recent grades, submissions, and critical course documents.
Just my $0.02 worth.
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