State Officials are busily reassuring Marylanders that their voter registration data and recent election results haven’t been compromised by ByteGrid. The company, which operates across Maryland and the U.S., was recently revealed to be a majority Russian-owned corporation.
Since 2015, Admiral Cochrane Drive in Annapolis has been homeport to Russian-owned and operated ByteGrid in Annapolis. ByteGrid became Russian owned in June of 2011 through funding by Altpoint Capital Partners. ByteGrid Silver Spring LLC registered as a foreign corporation in May of 2011. While their data center is located in Silver Spring, the parent corporation, ByteGrid Holdings LLC, is headquartered in McLean, Virginia.
What Maryland’s elected officials did not divulge in the recent reveal about voter registration data is that ByteGrid has control of multiple county, state and federal websites and the data collected by those sites. ByteGrid’s website states they are “currently under contract with Anne Arundel County and the State of Maryland (through a prime contractor) to manage data center activities for a variety of systems.”
Some of the sensitive government and personal data that is being managed by this Russian-owned company on a county, state and federal level includes:
Maryland State Department of Education utilizes ScanTracks (c) Security Barcode Scanning Solution. Sidus, a part of ByteGrid, was awarded this contract. The program tracks a student’s name, State ID, Security ID and if they completed Maryland School Assessment tests.
Montgomery County Public Schools awarded Sidus a Scan Tracks Scanning Program in June of 2014. Carroll County Public Schools also awarded a contract to Sidus for their ScanTracks program in 2014. This contract was in effect at the time that ByteGrid purchased Sidus.
ByteGrid has been overseeing Adventist HealthCare’s patients’ HIPAA data since 2016. Adventist is one of the largest healthcare providers in the Washington D.C. metropolitan area. On their website, ByteGrid states that their “HIPAA compliant hosting solutions provide clients the peace of mind knowing protected health information is safe and secure.”
ByteGrid is also subcontractor to the Department of Labor. Lockheed Martin selected BYTEGRID as a Subcontractor on multi-million dollar Department of Labor (DOL) contract in July 2013. This seven-year indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity calls for the relocation of all DOL data centers located in the metropolitan Washington, DC to BYTEGRID’s facility in Silver Spring, MD.
Montgomery County gave ByteGrid’s customers $12 million in tax breaks to move their data to Russian-owned ByteGrid’s data center.
One of the Department of Labor’s database contains extensive information on Veterans. Every Active Duty member of the Armed Services is supposed to enroll in Transition Assistance Program (TAP) prior to separation from the service. Highly sensitive personal data about each veteran is contained in the Veterans’ Data Exchange Initiative (VDEI) now held by ByteGrid, according to the U.S. Federal Register.
ByteGrid also purchased the Sidus Group LLC tradenames Sidus Data and Sidus BioData. Sidus has active contracts with the State of Maryland that are run by ByteGrid. Maryland’s Department of Information Technology (DoIT) provides a spreadsheet of contracts known as Consulting and Technical Services CATS+ Project List.
- State Board of Elections Data Center Operations and Desktop Support contract for $6.7 million from 12/11/2014-12/31/2019.
- Maryland Department of Transportation Email, PDA and Network Fax (EPF) Managed Services (SBR) contract that expires on 12-31-2018.
- Maryland State Board of Elections Project Manager (PM) contract that expired on 11-27-2014.
- Maryland Department of Transportation Email, PDA & Network Fax (EPF) Managed Services contract (JOIB3400026) awarded $3 million on 10/4/2014.
- Maryland Department of Transportation IT Consulting Services for Email, PDA, Network and Fax contract (CATS # – J01P8200157) award of $400,000 on 7/16/2012
Brian Walker is the Maryland DOT point of contact for the Transportation contract.
ByteGrid also designed and hosts the Anne Arundel County Circuit Court website.
Carmen Skarlupka is a veteran and investigative journalist from Anne Arundel County.
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