To: All campus
Dear Campus Community,
CatCourses (also known as Canvas), is currently offline as Instructure, the parent company of Canvas, responds to a nationwide security incident affecting thousands of institutions.
UC Merced had seen no indication of data breach specific to our campus prior to Instructure taking the system offline. However, the Office of Information Technology is actively monitoring the situation.
Instructure and the University of California are continuing to assess and implement protective measures. We encourage all members of the campus community to remain vigilant and exercise caution regarding potential phishing attempts or suspicious communications claiming to be from UC Merced or Canvas-related services.
The university will never request passwords, Social Security numbers, birthdates or banking information through email, text message or phone calls.
We will continue to keep the campus community informed as additional information becomes available. You may also check OIT's Status webpage for the latest incident updates.
Thank you for your patience and understanding.
