Canvas hack: is it ever a good idea to pay a ransom, and what happens to the data?

Businesses are advised against paying – but as the Canvas platform hack shows, many are prepared to deal to protect users’ privacy

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After a week of outages, hundreds of millions of students’ data stolen, delayed assignment due dates, and school login pages being defaced by hackers, US tech firm Instructure – which operates the education platform Canvas, used by education providers worldwide – announced it had “reached an agreement with the unauthorised actor” behind the ransomware attack.

Experts read the careful language as a sign that a ransom has been paid. The company has not confirmed.