We use information technology, digital communications and other computer resources to carry out important operational and marketing activities and to maintain our business records. We have implemented systems and processes intended to address ongoing and evolving cybersecurity risks, secure our information technology, applications and computer systems, and prevent unauthorized access to or loss of sensitive, confidential and personal data. We adhere to the National Institute of Standards and Technology ("NIST") CSF Framework to ensure we have proper controls in place to reduce our risk to cyber security threats. We also depend on various partners and providers, and our mortgage and title service software partners, to secure our home buyers' personal identifiable and confidential information. We provide regular personnel awareness training regarding potential cyber security threats, including the use of internal tips, reminders and phishing assessments, to help ensure employees remain diligent in identifying potential risks. In addition, we have deployed monitoring capabilities to support early detection, internal and external escalation, and effective responses to potential anomalies. However, cyberattacks or other security breaches may remain undetected over an extended period of time and may not be addressed in a timely manner to minimize the impact, which could result in substantial costs. Many of our information technology and other computer resources are provided to us and/or maintained on our behalf by third-party service providers pursuant to agreements that specify to varying degrees certain security and service standards. We also rely on our third-party service providers to maintain effective cyber security measures to keep our information secure and to carry cyber insurance. Although we and our service providers employ what we believe are adequate security, disaster recovery and other preventative and corrective measures, our security measures, taken as a whole, may not be sufficient for all possible situations and may be vulnerable to, among other things, hacking, employee error, system error and faulty password management.
Our ability to conduct our business may be impaired if these information technology and computer resources, including our website and customer-facing applications, are compromised, degraded or damaged or if they fail, whether due to a virus or other harmful circumstance, intentional penetration or disruption of our information technology resources by a third party, natural disaster, hardware or software corruption or failure or error (including a failure of security controls incorporated into or applied to such hardware or software), telecommunications system failure, service provider error or failure or intentional or unintentional personnel actions (including the failure to follow our security protocols), or lost connectivity to our networked resources. A significant disruption in the functioning of these resources, or breach thereof, including our website, could damage our reputation and cause us to lose customers, sales and revenue.
In addition, breaches of our information technology systems or data security systems, including cyberattacks and malicious uses of artificial intelligence, could result in the unintended and/or unauthorized public disclosure or the misappropriation of proprietary, personal identifying and confidential information (including information we collect and retain in connection with our business about our homebuyers, business partners and employees), and require us to incur significant expense (that we may not be able to recover in whole or in part from our service providers or responsible parties, or their or our insurers) to address and remediate or otherwise resolve. The unintended and/or unauthorized public disclosure or the misappropriation of proprietary, personal identifying or confidential information may also lead to litigation or other proceedings against us by affected individuals and/or business partners and/or by regulators, and the outcome of such proceedings, which could include losses, penalties, fines, injunctions, expenses and charges recorded against our earnings, could have a material and adverse effect on our financial condition, results of operations and cash flows and harm our reputation. In addition, the costs of maintaining adequate protection against such threats, based on considerations of their evolution, increasing sophistication, pervasiveness and frequency and/or increasingly demanding government-mandated standards or obligations regarding information security and privacy, could be material to our consolidated financial statements in a particular period or over various periods.