Arcadia Community,
This message is being sent to all Arcadia University Faculty, Staff, and Students.
We have been made aware of a security incident involving Instructure (Canvas) that is impacting multiple higher education institutions. Canvas is temporarily unavailable while the University works with external resources to determine next steps. If you are currently logged in to Canvas through an existing session, please sign out and discontinue use of this system until further notice. We will revisit enabling Canvas on Monday morning.
Instructure detected the breach and is working with a forensics firm and will provide a full accounting to Arcadia University and other customers. Our team is actively following communications from Instructure, threat intelligence, and news resources as more information is made available.
Arcadia University has taken recommended actions shared by the vendor in response to this security incident. Because the University uses single sign-on (two-factor authentication), University authentication information, including IDs and passwords, was not stored on Canvas systems.
We recognize this interruption is occurring during the grading period. The Registrar’s office will reach out individually to faculty with the next steps regarding final grades.
Below are a few tips to keep in mind and help keep you safe:
Only trust information from known, trusted, and verified sources.
Be on the lookout for malicious emails related to this incident; threat actors may ask you to sign up and provide personal information in order to be notified of incident updates.
Arcadia’s IT Help Desk will never ask you for your password.
Please contact the Help Desk (helpdesk@arcadia.edu) if you have any questions or need support.
Thank you,
Information Technology and the Office of the Registrar
Update:
Dear Arcadia University Community,
Canvas is back online and fully available for use.
Access to the system was restored this morning, Monday, May 11, following the vendor’s security incident that began last week.
Instructure (Canvas) has provided further details regarding the nature of the disruption. On Saturday evening, the CEO of Instructure released a statement clarifying the impact:
“This incident involved unauthorized access to part of our environment. The data fields involved include information like usernames, email addresses, course names, enrollment information and messages. Core learning data (course content, submissions, credentials) was not compromised. We're still validating all findings, but we want to be clear about what we understand was and wasn't affected.”
As a reminder, because Arcadia University utilizes single sign-on with two-factor authentication, university passwords and authentication IDs were not stored on Canvas systems and remain secure.
We will monitor this situation and will communicate with additional information if needed.
If you have any questions or need technical support, please contact the Help Desk at helpdesk@arcadia.edu or 215-572-2898.
Sincerely,
Information Technology
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