A pediatric health care network with offices in Smithtown and Miller Place has agreed to a $2.7 million settlement with New York and Connecticut authorities following a cybersecurity breach that exposed personal information belonging to hundreds of thousands of patients.
New York Attorney General Letitia James and Connecticut Attorney General William Tong announced the settlement Friday, Oct. 16, with Boston Children’s Health Physicians and its IT services provider, XTIUM.
According to the New York Attorney General’s Office, an August 2024 cyberattack exposed records belonging to approximately 825,000 New York residents and 62,871 Connecticut residents.
The stolen information included Social Security numbers and driver’s license numbers belonging to more than 170,000 New Yorkers.
Boston Children’s Health Physicians operates a network of pediatric practices that includes Branch Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine in Smithtown and Personal Pediatrics in Miller Place, according to its official practice directory.
However, authorities have not identified which individual practices had patient records compromised. It remains unclear whether patients at either Suffolk County location were directly affected by the breach.
According to the Attorney General’s Office, investigators found that Boston Children’s Health Physicians failed to address known cybersecurity vulnerabilities before the attack.
Those weaknesses included an inadequately protected archive containing more than one million patient billing records.
The settlement requires Boston Children’s Health Physicians and XTIUM to pay financial penalties and implement stronger cybersecurity protections to safeguard patient information.
The agreement addresses failures in data security at the network and its IT provider. The two Suffolk County pediatric practices were not separately accused of wrongdoing in the Attorney General’s announcement.
Authorities have not disclosed how many Long Island residents, if any, were among those whose information was compromised.
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