or experience disruptions, and any significant failure or disruption of these systems could prevent us from making sales, ordering and delivering products and otherwise conducting our business. Many of our customers use our website to check real-time product availability, see their customized pricing and place orders, and to access our connected solution platforms. Any material disruption of our website, our connected solution applications, or the Internet in general could impair our order processing or prevent our manufacturers and customers from accessing information and cause us to lose business or damage our reputation.
Cyber or other security incidents, could disrupt our internal systems causing service failures, disrupt our business operations, result in the loss of critical and confidential information, and adversely impact our reputation, our business, financial condition, results of operations and cash flows. Our connected products potentially expose our business to cybersecurity threats.
We create, deploy and maintain information technology (“IT”) and engineering systems, some of which involve sensitive information, including personal data, trade secrets and other proprietary information. In addition, our connected products potentially expose our business to cybersecurity threats. As a result, we are subject to systems, service or product failures, not only resulting from our own failures or the failures of third-party service providers, natural disasters, power shortages or terrorist attacks, but also from exposure to cyber or other security threats. Most of the jurisdictions in which we operate have laws and regulations relating to data security and protection of information. See “Risks Relating to Legal and Regulatory Matters – Risks associated with data privacy issues, including evolving laws and regulations and associated compliance efforts, could adversely affect our business, financial condition, results of operations and cash flows.” We have certain measures to protect our information systems and products against unauthorized access and disclosure of personal information and of our confidential information and trade secrets and confidential information and trade secrets belonging to our customers. However, there is no assurance that the security measures we have put in place will be effective in every case.
Global cybersecurity threats and incidents can range from employee mistake or intentional misconduct, uncoordinated individual attempts to gain unauthorized access to IT, payment and other systems to sophisticated and targeted measures known as advanced persistent threats directed at us, our products, our customers, vendors and/or our third-party service providers, including cloud providers. There has been an increase in the frequency and sophistication of cyber and other security threats we face, and our customers are increasingly requiring cyber and other security protections and standards in our products, and we may incur additional costs to comply with such demands. We have experienced, and expect to continue to experience, these types of threats and incidents.
We sell security and life safety solutions, which are designed to secure the safety of our subscribers and their residences or commercial properties. If these solutions fail for any reason, including due to defects in our software, a carrier outage, a failure of our network operating center, a failure on the part of one of our service provider partners, user error or cybersecurity incident, we could be subject to liability and reputational damage for such failures and our business could suffer.
We seek to deploy comprehensive measures to deter, prevent, detect, respond to and mitigate these threats, including employee training, identity and access controls, data protection, vulnerability assessments, product software designs that we believe are less susceptible to cyber-attacks, security and operational monitoring of our IT networks and systems and maintenance of backup and protective systems. Despite these efforts, cyber and other security incidents have resulted, and may in the future potentially result, in the unauthorized access, misappropriation, destruction, corruption, misuse or unavailability of personal data, company assets, critical data and confidential or proprietary information (our own or that of third parties), product failure and the disruption of business operations. Moreover, employee error or malfeasance, faulty password management or other intentional or inadvertent non-compliance with our security protocols and policies may result in breaches of our information systems. Our efforts to protect our company data and the information we receive may also be unsuccessful due to software “bugs,” system errors or other technical deficiencies, or vulnerabilities of our vendors and service providers. Cyber and other security incidents aimed at the software embedded in our products could lead to third-
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