On Wednesday, May 6th, Instructure, the parent company of Canvas, had notified JMU that the university was impacted by a widespread data breach affecting thousands of institutions.

JMU IT is advising all students, faculty and staff to not click on any links or open unsolicited messages or emails that appear related to Instructure or Canvas.  As a result of the incident, Canvas is currently inaccessible as Instructure takes measures to remediate the situation.

Instructure has informed JMU and other impacted universities that it has taken steps to secure the platform, including remediating the underlying vulnerability. Additionally, Instructure has engaged a third-party forensics firm for an investigation and notified law enforcement authorities. 

We are working with Instructure to learn more about the impact of the incident and will provide updates when additional information is available.

For additional details on this security incident, please see:

• Instructure Security Update: https://instructure.com/resources/blog/security-incident-update/
• Instructure StatusPage: https://status.instructure.com
• JMU IT StatusPage: https://jamesmadisonuniversity.statuspage.io/ 

Thursday, May 7, 2026:

Canvas sites at universities worldwide, including JMU, are down in response to a security breach.

Exams scheduled for Friday, May 8 at 8 a.m. and 10:30 a.m. will be delayed until Wednesday, May 13. The revised exam schedule is available on the Registrar’s website. A campus-wide message will go out soon.

Your faculty are aware of this issue; please reach out to your instructors with individual questions.

We will continue to update you as we have more information.

Thursday, May 7, 2026

Canvas sites at universities worldwide, including JMU, are down in response to a security breach.

We do not know the duration of this outage, but we are notifying you now so you can begin to plan for the possibility of upcoming exams and grading without access to Canvas.

Exams scheduled for Friday, May 8 at 8 a.m. and 10:30 a.m. will be delayed until Wednesday, May 13. The revised exam schedule is available on the Registrar’s website. Students will be notified of this change shortly, and we will follow up Friday morning with alternative options. A campus-wide message will go out soon.

Please be in contact with your students to keep them apprised of any needed changes to exams or other end of semester assessments.  You can access your students’ email in MyMadison.

We will keep you updated as soon as we have any additional information.