our employees. The loss of key personnel, including our co-founder, President, Chief Executive Officer, and Chair, Dustin Moskovitz, and other key members of management, as well as our product development, engineering, sales, and marketing personnel, would disrupt our operations and have an adverse effect on our ability to grow our business. Changes in our senior management team may also cause disruptions in, and harm to, our business, results of operations, and financial condition.
We must continue to attract and retain highly qualified personnel in very competitive markets to continue to execute on our business strategy and growth plans.
To execute our business model, we must attract and retain highly qualified personnel. Competition for executive officers, software engineers, sales personnel, and other key personnel in our industry and in the San Francisco Bay Area, where our headquarters is located, and in other locations where we maintain offices, is intense. As we become a more mature company, we may find our recruiting efforts more challenging. The incentives to attract, retain, and motivate employees provided by our stock options and other equity awards, or by other compensation arrangements, may not be as effective as in the past. Many of the companies with which we compete for experienced personnel have greater resources than we have. Our recruiting efforts may also be limited by laws and regulations, such as restrictive immigration laws, and restrictions on travel or availability of visas (including during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic). If we do not succeed in attracting excellent personnel or retaining or motivating existing personnel, we may be unable to innovate quickly enough to support our business model or grow effectively.
Our failure to protect our sites, networks, and systems against security breaches, or otherwise to protect our confidential information or the confidential information of our users, customers, or other third parties, would damage our reputation and brand, and substantially harm our business and results of operations.
Breaches of our security measures or those of our third-party service providers or cyber security incidents would result in unauthorized access to our sites, networks, systems, and accounts; unauthorized access to, and misappropriation of, individuals’ personal information or other confidential or proprietary information of ourselves, our customers, or other third parties; viruses, worms, spyware, or other malware being served from our platform, mobile application, networks, or systems; deletion or modification of content or the display of unauthorized content on our platform; interruption, disruption, or malfunction of operations; costs relating to breach remediation, deployment of additional personnel and protection technologies, and response to governmental investigations and media inquiries and coverage; engagement of third-party experts and consultants; or litigation, regulatory action, and other potential liabilities. If any of these breaches of security should occur, we cannot guarantee that recovery protocols and backup systems will be sufficient to prevent data loss. Additionally, if any of these breaches occur, our reputation and brand could be damaged, our business may suffer, we could be required to expend significant capital and other resources to alleviate problems caused by such breaches, and we could be exposed to risk of loss, litigation or regulatory action, and other potential liability. Actual or anticipated security breaches or attacks may cause us to incur increasing costs, including costs to deploy additional personnel and protection technologies, train employees, and engage third-party experts and consultants. Additionally, there is an increased risk that we may experience cybersecurity-related events such as COVID-19-themed phishing attacks and other security challenges as a result of most of our employees and our service providers working remotely from non-corporate-managed networks during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and potentially beyond.
Any compromise or breach of our security measures, or those of our third-party service providers, could violate applicable privacy, data protection, data security, network and information systems security, and other laws, and cause significant legal and financial exposure, adverse publicity, and a loss of confidence in our security measures, which could have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations, and financial condition. We continue to devote significant resources to protect against security breaches, and we may need to devote significant resources in the future to address problems caused by breaches, including notifying affected subscribers and responding to any resulting litigation, which in turn, diverts resources from the growth and expansion of our business.
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