Epam Systems (EPAM) Risk Analysis

Our success largely depends on our ability to use and develop our technology, tools, code, methodologies, products, and services without infringing the intellectual property rights, including patents, copyrights, trade secrets and trademarks, of third parties. We have been subject to intellectual property infringement claims alleging that we used third party trademarks or copyrighted materials without permission. If those intellectual property rights were relevant to our service offerings, we would need to license those rights or we would be prevented from using the allegedly infringing intellectual property in our business. We typically indemnify clients who purchase our products, services and solutions against potential infringement of third-party intellectual property rights, which subjects us to the risk and cost of defending the underlying infringement claims. These claims require us to initiate or defend litigation on behalf of our clients, regardless of the merits of these claims, and our indemnification obligations are sometimes not subject to liability limits or exclusion of consequential, indirect or punitive damages. Intellectual property litigation diverts our management's attention from our business and existing or potential clients could defer or limit their purchase or use of our software product development services or solutions until we resolve such litigation. If any of these claims succeed, we may be forced to pay damages on behalf of our clients, redesign or cease offering our allegedly infringing products, services, or solutions, or obtain licenses for the allegedly infringing intellectual property. If we cannot obtain licenses on commercially reasonable terms, our clients may be forced to stop using our services or solutions. In addition, the existence and ownership of intellectual property rights created by generative AI technologies is currently subject to judicial and legislative review, and many jurisdictions do not recognize the existence of any protectable intellectual property rights in materials created by generative AI. If we are unable to meet our clients' expectations relating to the ownership of the intellectual property underlying software deliverables, we may face legal liability. We believe AI software developers occasionally indemnify their licensees against intellectual property claims, but we think it is unlikely such indemnification obligations would cover our potential damages, if any. Any of these actions, regardless of the outcome of licensing negotiations, litigation, or merits of the claim, could damage our reputation and materially adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations.

In the ordinary course of business, we collect, store, process, transmit, and view sensitive or confidential data, including intellectual property, proprietary business information and personally identifiable information belonging to us, our clients, our respective employees, and other end users. This information is stored in our data centers and networks or in the data centers and networks of third-party providers. Physical security and the secure storage, processing, maintenance and transmission of this information are critical to our operations, business strategy, and reputation. Our internal technology infrastructure or the technology infrastructure of our third-party providers on which our information security depends may be subject to disruptions or may otherwise fail to operate properly or become disabled or damaged as a result of a number of factors, including events that are wholly or partially beyond our control and that could adversely affect our ability to provide services or keep our information secure. Such events include IT attacks or failures, threats to physical security, electrical or telecommunications outages, damaging weather or other acts of nature, or employee or contractor error or malfeasance. Our employees, contractors, vendors, software and hardware suppliers, and other third parties in our information security supply chain, as well as sophisticated individual or collective groups of hackers, such as state-sponsored organizations, all pose threats to our information security. These individual, group, and organized actors have a variety of methods at their disposal, including deploying malicious software, exploiting vulnerabilities in hardware, software, or infrastructure, using social engineering or deceptive techniques to obtain information or gain access to our or our clients' or vendors' data, exploiting remote working connectivity and security susceptibilities, and executing coordinated attacks to compromise our services, disrupt our operations, damage our reputation, or gain access to our communications, networks and data centers. We have in the past experienced cybersecurity incidents and expect to continue to be the target of malicious attacks. Threats to information security evolve constantly and are increasingly sophisticated and complex, which makes detecting and successfully defending against them more difficult. Undetected vulnerabilities that persist in our network environment over long periods of time could spread within our networks or into the networks and systems of our suppliers and clients. An attack viewed as immaterial or isolated at the time of its occurrence can later become material or part of a larger and coordinated effort. We frequently update and improve our information security environment and assess and adopt new methods, devices, and technologies, but our policies and information security controls may not keep pace or be designed to detect emerging threats and our response to incidents may not be adequate, may fail to accurately assess the severity of an incident, may not be fast enough to prevent or limit harm, or may fail to sufficiently remediate an incident. Our ability to monitor our third-party suppliers' information security systems is limited and we are not able to detect vulnerabilities in their systems until we are notified of the existence of those vulnerabilities. There have been and will continue to be attacks on our and third parties' information security supply chains. We cannot guarantee that our information security supply chain has not been breached and does not contain exploitable defects, bugs, or vulnerabilities that could result in an incident, breach, or other disruption to our system or the systems of our clients or suppliers. Despite our multiple security measures, any breach of our facilities, network, or information security defenses compromises the information stored in those locations and allows the accessed information to be held for ransom, publicly disclosed, misappropriated, lost or stolen. Such a breach, misappropriation, or disruption, or the perception that we have been breached or are vulnerable to a breach, disrupts our operations and the services we provide to clients, and any actual, alleged, or perceived breach of network or information security that we suffer damages our reputation, causes a loss of confidence in our products and services, and requires us to expend significant resources, which may not be covered by insurance, to protect against further allegations and breaches and to rectify problems caused by these events. Any such access, disclosure or other loss of information could result in legal claims or proceedings, liability under applicable laws, regulatory penalties or enforcement actions, and could adversely affect our reputation, business, revenues and competitive position.

Our service model relies on maintaining active and stable utility connections, voice and data communications, online resource management, financial and operational record management, client service and data processing systems between our client sites, our delivery centers and our client management locations. Our business activities may be materially disrupted in the event of a partial or complete failure of any of these technologies or systems, which could be due to software malfunction, cybersecurity attacks, conversion errors due to system upgrades, damage from fire, earthquake, power loss, military action, telecommunications failure, unauthorized entry, government shutdowns, demands placed on internet infrastructure by users, increased bandwidth requirements or other events beyond our control. Our crisis management procedures, business continuity, and disaster recovery plans may not be effective at preventing or mitigating the effects of such disruptions, particularly in the case of multiple or catastrophic events. Loss of all or part of the infrastructure or systems could hinder our performance or our ability to complete client projects on time which, in turn, could reduce our revenues or otherwise materially adversely affect our business and business reputation.