FORT WAYNE, Ind. (Network Indiana): No voter information was compromised, said the Allen County Election Board, after learning that the CEO of the company they contract to keep up with poll worker and polling location information has been arrested and charged with allowing some information to be stored on servers in China.
The company, Konnech, is based in Michigan. CEO Eugene Yu was arrested last week and charged in Los Angeles.
Charges include conspiracy to embezzle public funds and grand theft by embezzlement of public funds, related to what prosecutors in California call a massive data breach.
“Under the terms of the contract, Konnech was responsible for making sure that the personal information of those workers was kept secure on equipment controlled by the company…within the United States,” explained L.A. District Attorney George Gascon.
In a prepared statement Tuesday the Allen County Election Board said that no voter information is stored on Konnech servers, nor is any of the company’s servers connected to any election results or vote count information. The board says no sensitive or confidential information on Allen County poll workers was stored on Konnech’s servers.
When Yu was in court in Michigan, facing a judge for the first time via video, his lawyer issued a warning.
“He has major accounts with Los Angeles County, St. Louis County, Alameda County, San Francisco County. And with the election approximately a month away it will be chaos for those municipalities,” he said.
The Allen County board says that none of the accusations made in California have anything to do with the upcoming election in Indiana.
But, as a precaution, the data that was stored by Konnech is being moved.
“In light of the allegations made against Konnech, the Election Board and Allen County IT professionals will move all data from Konnech’s data center in Lansing, Michigan to a secure cloud tenant to continue operations for the upcoming election. Our Allen County IT professionals are in full agreement for this tenant to host this data. Allen County will closely monitor activity logs to ensure the security of the data,” said the board in its statement.
“The Allen County Election Board is taking this matter seriously and monitoring the ongoing investigation. Our primary focus is maintaining the integrity of Allen County elections, and the continued security of any data related to our election process.”
Konnech’s contract with Allen County began in 2012. The data being moved, according to the election board, is mostly names, email addresses, and phone numbers.
