A cyberattack disrupted Instructure’s Canvas during a critical period, locking out students across thousands of institutions and forcing colleges to pause coursework, extend deadlines, and create improvised alternatives. Reporting indicates the breach affected nearly 9,000 schools and educational institutions worldwide, including parts of the University of Illinois system. The incident is likely to intensify institutional scrutiny of vendor concentration risk, since Canvas is often treated as a central learning and operations system rather than a replaceable tool. For campus IT leaders, the event raises the bar for business continuity planning, incident communication, and the feasibility of switching course delivery systems during outages.