HAUPPAUGE, NY — Suffolk County has begun catching up on delayed payments from the Department of Social Services to child care providers in the wake of the Sept. 8 ransomware attack, but now new questions have arisen as to whether those businesses and clients have had their personal information compromised, Newsday reported.
There already was a 30-day processing time for vouchers, and on average, vouchers are being processed within 35 days and any that have been received by Oct. 11, have been sent to the comptroller’s office for payment, Suffolk spokeswoman Marykate Guilfoyle told Newsday, adding that over 300 payments have been made since the cyber intrusion.
When the county’s web-based applications were hit with a ransomware attack, it forced officials to take down some online services, including web pages and email, as they investigated, but county officials have never indicated what demands have been made.
A cybercriminal gang named “BlackCat” has alleged responsibility, according to posts on the dark web.
County officials have previously said that the hackers responsible for the cyberattack had either accessed or acquired residents’ personal information and they advised vigilant credit monitoring.
On Wednesday, officials announced that possibly 470,000 people who received traffic tickets from 2013 to 2022 could have had their driver’s license numbers, as well as other identification compromised in the attack.
County officials are now offering free credit monitoring and restoration for those who qualify.
But some child care providers, like Michele Kessler, who owns An Apple a Daycare in Bayport, are concerned about the impact of the hack, according to Newsday.
“A big part of this is we don’t know the nature of what was hacked,” she told the outlet. “Yes, we’ve been inconvenienced, negatively impacted, but what is the full fallout, and are we going to be experiencing this down the road because all of our financial information, banking numbers, business IDs, children’s birthdays may have been compromised? We’re not being treated like the essential workforce that we are.”
But Guilfoyle told the outlet that “while the forensic assessment is ongoing, there is no indication that the data has been impacted,” noting people can take “precautionary measures” listed on the county’s website.
Comptroller John Kennedy told Newsday that his staff has been working overtime to roll out the payments but that expects the backlog to continue into next year.
To read more in Newsday, click here.
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