The new law establishes strong safeguards for sensitive student information and bans AI training on student data, extending California's existing Pre-K through 12th grade student privacy protections to millions of California higher education students.
In the first half of 2026, state agencies and HHS published 5,429 data breach notification filings describing 1,969 breach events and affecting at least 343 million people. A single platform breach at Instructure (Canvas) accounts for nearly 80 percent of that total, and the share of breaches whose cause cannot be determined from the public record has risen to one in three.