A higher education privacy and governance warning is intensifying as campuses confront accountability gaps in cloud-based learning systems. One report highlights that after a Canvas learning management platform breach, institutions can’t outsource FERPA and related legal oversight simply because student data sits inside third-party infrastructure. The core point is governance responsibility: even when vendors operate systems, institutions remain responsible for oversight and must be ready for scrutiny if protected student information is exposed. The report frames “digital deferred maintenance” as an institutional risk, where campuses treated IT as operational rather than as strategic accountability. For CIOs, CISOs, and boards, the consequence is shared liability risk and new due-diligence expectations around vendor contracts, incident response, and monitoring. Institutions that fail to manage technical and contractual accountability may face reputational damage and compliance exposure. With more education platforms moving into the cloud, cybersecurity is shifting from a purely technical concern to an oversight and governance issue that trustees increasingly must own.