HIGHLAND HEIGHTS, Ky. — Students across the country are being impacted by a security breach involving a popular online platform used as a digital hub for many classes.
The platform, called Canvas, is used at schools throughout the Tri-State to track grades, assignments and more.
According to Canvas's parent company, Instructure, the platform has more than 30 million active users.
And with finals season in full swing, Greater Cincinnati area students are no exception.
Officials at Northern Kentucky University confirmed the school is aware of the "cybersecurity incident" Thursday.
"NKU is not alone in being impacted and has been working closely with the vendor to monitor the situation and protect university systems," a statement from NKU said.
The university said it had already implemented the recommended security precautions prior to the incident.
"At this time, NKU continues to actively monitor the situation and is in regular communication with Canvas as they work to fully resolve the issue," the statement said.
NKU encouraged its students, faculty and staff to "remain vigilant," reminding the community that the university will never request usernames or passwords via email, phone or text, and any "unexpected" multi-factor authentication prompts should not be approved.
University of Cincinnati officials also responded with a statement Thursday.
"Canvas is currently inaccessible to campus users due to a nationwide cybersecurity incident involving Instructure, the third-party vendor behind the Canvas online learning management system," UC said in a statement. "We are seeking an estimate from Instructure on when Canvas will again be operational. Both while the system is down and even when system functionality returns, please do not respond to any unsolicited emails or messages appearing to come from Canvas or the university, particularly any requesting login credentials or personal information."
Instructure said on their website Thursday that they are investigating the issue and have placed Canvas, Canvas Beta and Canvas Test in "maintenance mode."
