Dixon Public Schools

I intend this to be the last update on the Instructure/Canvas Data Breach.  

Recapping the incident, there was a widespread breach of the Canvas platform, which is owned by Instructure. That breach started on April 25^th and was active for several days.  Dixon Public Schools uses Canvas as our primary Learning Management System for Dixon High School and Reagan Middle School.  The breach was a direct attack on the Canvas platform, and impacted data from nearly 9,000 institutions, primary schools and Universities, and was due to failures of the Instructure security protocols. 

The data from Dixon Public Schools that was breached was a list of student names and email addresses, along with current class enrollment information. Instructure has confirmed with us that no other data from Dixon Public Schools was accessed. While the breach was serious and very concerning, it was very limited in scope.  We don’t store personal student or parent information in Canvas. Dixon Public Schools has a small number of trusted vendors we use to manage our operations and classrooms, and we only load the information required for each system to operate.  

Instructure did have a second breach on May 7^th, that was related to the first breach, which utilized a slightly different attack vector. Dixon Public Schools experienced an overnight outage from this second breach, but we had no further data compromised.

Instructure has implemented new security tools and protocols to prevent further breaches and has taken measures to prevent the breached data from being released. They may send out direct emails to our high school and middle school families at some point to follow up on the breach. 

Identity theft, ransomware, and other cybercrimes are more prevalent than ever before. Dixon Public Schools takes responsibility to our families seriously, and we work hard to keep our data secure.  We limit the use of external systems to minimize our exposure and have protocols and tools in place to safeguard our environment. 

James Manley

Director of Technology