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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