Frontier Communications paying Connecticut $625K after major data leak in 2024

One of the most prominent telecommunications companies in the United States has agreed to pay the state of Connecticut $625,000 after a significant data breach.

Frontier Communications Parent Inc., or Frontier, settled to resolve an investigation into an April 2024 data breach that compromised the sensitive personal information, including Social Security numbers, of 58,841 people in Connecticut.

Connecticut Attorney General William Tong announced the news in a release on Friday that explained how the incident came to be.

A threat actor is said to have used compromised credentials of Frontier workers and vendors to gain access to its internal IT systems. From there, un-encrypted personal information was exfiltrated.

Later, the threat actor offered the stolen data for sale on the dark web.

Investigators in Connecticut found that the attack was made possible by several security failures by Frontier regarding identity and access management, segmentation, logging and monitoring, encryption, incident response, training and data loss prevention.

Beyond the $625,000 payment, Frontier must take several measures to enhance its data security practices moving forward.

The first step is complying with Connecticut's consumer protection and data privacy laws, like the Connecticut Unfair Trade Practices Act, the Connecticut Data Privacy Act and Connecticut's Data Safeguards Law.

Frontier also must put in place and maintain a comprehensive information security program that meets reporting requirements to the CEO.

More employee training will also occur, as will the implementation and maintenance of an incident response plan to prepare for future security incidents.

Other safeguards pertain to inter alia, document retention and deletion, logging and monitoring, segmentation, access controls, password management, MFA, encryption, risk assessments, penetration testing, antivirus maintenance, data loss prevention, component hardening and intrusion and endpoint detection.

Frontier must additionally facilitate a third-party assessment within a year and provide a copy of that report to Tong's office.

In his release, Tong expressed that the settlement and policy changes are necessary so that no more cyberattacks hit .

"Frontier collected data and maintained sensitive records for tens of thousands of Connecticut customers, and they had an obligation to secure that data," Tong said. "This settlement, following a related class action, holds Frontier accountable and requires strong new security measures to ensure this type of breach does not occur again."

Tong's release further notes that Frontier reached a separate $5.64 million settlement in a similar class action court in Texas that gives nationwide relief to around 750,000 people, as well as two years of complimentary credit monitoring.

In January, Verizon bought Frontier, and Tong says both entities cooperated with state investigators.

The $625,000 from Frontier will go directly into the state's general fund, according to Tong's office.

Dalton Zbierski is a digital editor and writer at FOX61 News. He can be reached at [email protected] .

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