We depend on data centers operated by third parties and third-party internet hosting providers, principally Amazon Web Services and any disruption in the operation of these facilities or access to the internet could adversely affect our business.
We primarily serve our clients from third-party data center hosting facilities provided by Amazon Web Services (“AWS”). We rely upon AWS to operate certain aspects of our solutions and any disruption of or interference with our use of AWS could impair our ability to deliver our solutions to our clients, resulting in client dissatisfaction, damage to our reputation, loss of clients and harm to our business. We have architected our solutions and computer systems to use data processing, storage capabilities and other services provided by AWS. Given this, we cannot easily switch our AWS operations to another cloud provider, so any disruption of or interference with our use of AWS could increase our operating costs and materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations, and we might not be able to secure service from an alternative provider on similar terms.
Our business requires the ongoing availability and uninterrupted operation of internal and external transaction processing systems and services. Our third-party providers of transaction processing and information technology-related functions are ultimately responsible for maintaining their own network security, disaster recovery and system management procedures, and our review processes for such providers may be insufficient to identify, prevent, or mitigate adverse events. The owners and operators of our current and future hosting facilities do not guarantee that our clients’ access to our solutions will be uninterrupted, error-free or secure. We or our third-party providers may experience website disruptions, outages and other performance problems. These problems may be caused by a variety of factors, including infrastructure changes, human or software errors, viruses, security attacks, fraud, spikes in client usage and denial of service issues. In some instances, we may not be able to identify the cause or causes of these performance problems within an acceptable period of time. We do not control the operation of these data center facilities, and such facilities, as well as our own information technology systems, are vulnerable to damage or interruption from human error, intentional bad acts, power loss, hardware failures, telecommunications failures, improper operation, unauthorized entry, data loss, power loss, cybersecurity attacks, fires, wars, terrorist attacks, floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, natural disasters or similar catastrophic events. They also could be subject to break-ins, computer viruses, sabotage, intentional acts of vandalism and other misconduct. The occurrence of a natural disaster or an act of terrorism, a decision to close the facilities without adequate notice or terminate our hosting arrangement or other unanticipated problems could result in lengthy interruptions in the delivery of our solutions, cause system interruptions, prevent our clients’ account holders from accessing their accounts online, reputational harm and loss of critical data, prevent us from supporting our solutions or cause us to incur additional expense in arranging for new facilities and support.
We also depend on third-party internet-hosting providers and continuous and uninterrupted access to the Internet through third-party bandwidth providers to operate our business. If we lose the services of one or more of our Internet-hosting or bandwidth providers for any reason or if their services are disrupted, for example due to viruses or denial of service or other attacks on their systems, or due to human error, intentional bad acts, power loss, hardware failures, telecommunications failures, fires, wars, terrorist attacks, floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes or similar catastrophic events, we could experience disruption in our ability to offer our solutions and adverse perception of our solutions’ reliability, or we could be required to retain the services of replacement providers, which could increase our operating costs and materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations.
Furthermore, prolonged interruption in the availability, or reduction in the speed or other functionality, of our products or services could materially harm our reputation and business. Frequent
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