Calif. Budget Omits Cybersecurity Funds for Student Aid Commission
Calif. Budget Omits Cybersecurity Funds for Student Aid Commission
Publish Date: 2026-05-15 14:52:00
Source Domain: www.govtech.com
(TNS) — A backup server. Annual IT maintenance. And an IT staffer.
Among other requests, the California Student Aid Commission — the agency that administers financial aid programs for college and university students — asked California’s final budget for $503,000 for its information technology needs. Secure and modern systems, it said, were necessary to ensure smooth-sailing access to resources for the 2.2 million students who apply for aid annually.
This expenditure, however, did not make it into Gov. Gavin Newsom’s revised 2026-27 budget released Thursday. It was not in his January budget proposal either, and will now likely be the subject of discussion between agency representatives and legislators before the final budget is passed in June.
“At a time of escalating cyber attacks targeting educational institutions nationwide, CSAC’s mission-critical request for a backup server and essential IT staffing was not included in the May Revise — despite recommendations from the California Department of Technology to the administration that CSAC needs redundant server infrastructure to meet modern data protection and continuity standards for administering state and federal financial aid,” Nicole Kangas, the commission’s spokesperson, said.
This comes at the heels of a massive cyber attack against learning management system Canvas last week. Used by thousands of educational institutions including the University of California, California State University and California Community Colleges systems, the Canvas data breach and outage meant millions of students lost access to course materials, assignments and grades only weeks before finals season.
If a similar attack were to compromise the student aid commission’s “sole server,” Kangas said, it could result in Californian students losing access to financial aid systems for weeks. The stakes, she said, were especially high for…
