A recent breach involving the Canvas learning management system is renewing scrutiny on higher education’s vendor reliance, with analysts warning that campuses can’t outsource legal and ethical accountability for student records to third-party cloud infrastructure. The immediate discussion around liability and potential FERPA exposure is widening into a larger governance concern: even if data processing is performed by a software provider, institutions remain responsible for oversight and governance of educational records. The breach is being cited as evidence that universities have accumulated “digital deferred maintenance” and may face a broader wave of compliance challenges as IT architecture becomes more complex and more tightly coupled to vendors. The warning is effectively a governance call—trustees and leadership teams are being urged to treat cloud systems as strategic infrastructure, not just operational tools.