Instructure’s Canvas breach again exposed higher education’s dependency on centralized learning platforms, with thousands of institutions temporarily locked out during a critical final-exam period. The cyberattack disrupted access for nearly 9,000 schools and educational institutions worldwide, prompting delays, paused coursework, and deadline extensions while IT teams investigated. The incident highlighted that LMS vendors now function as operational critical infrastructure, not just instructional tools. Even when institutions have local backup workflows, the disruption can still cascade into grading timelines, academic advising, and student compliance with course requirements. As vendors and campuses respond to incident recovery and potential legal fallout, CIOs and compliance offices are likely to intensify vendor risk management, contract requirements, and continuity planning for future LMS outages.