College says Canvas hack will not affect adoption plans

Alan Spivey, Imperial’s Interim Vice Provost for Education and Student Experience, said the cyber-attack on Canvas which occurred in late April “does not change” plans to roll out the learning management system throughout the College.

While the College said they were still “working to understand the impact to Imperial”, assurances were made that usernames and passwords “were not affected” by the incident, and that there was “no indication that university systems have been compromised.” 

Canvas, an educational software platform operated by American firm Infrastructure, was hacked twice between late April and early May, which resulted in data such as usernames, email addresses, and internal messages from close to 9,000 institutions being compromised. 

Infrastructure later announced that they had “reached an agreement” with the hackers, whereby the stolen data from “impacted Instructure customers” was returned to the company, alongside digital confirmation of data destruction. According to some experts, this signifies a ransom has been paid, although Infrastructure did not confirm this.

Imperial’s current set up on Canvas includes 800 staff accounts and 30 student accounts, to which are associated names, email addresses, and CIDs. The only messages on the platform are test ones.

The College said that staff and students directly impacted by the incident have been contacted.

“I recognise that news like this can be concerning, and I want to assure you that it is being taken seriously,” Spivey wrote. “The incident is being carefully monitored in collaboration with Canvas (Instructure), alongside our ICT teams and the Data Protection Office.”

Imperial has increased monitoring for phishing attacks, especially ones associated with the incident, and its ICT team are accelerating existing plans to roll out phishing-resistant Passkeys.

The College is expected to fully replace the legacy platforms Blackboard and Insendi with Canvas starting in July 2026 for the Business School, and October 2026 for other courses.