Our business could be adversely affected by health epidemics and pandemics, including the current COVID-19 pandemic.
We face risks related to health epidemics and pandemics, including the COVID-19 pandemic, which could lead to the disruption of our business operations by impacting the global economy and our employees, REPs, end-users, wholesale customers, network transmission customers, service providers, vendors and suppliers. These effects could also have a variety of adverse impacts on us, including reduced demand for energy, particularly from commercial and industrial customers, delayed or delinquent customer payments to us, slowing growth in our service territory, reduced availability or productivity of our workforce, constraints on our supply chain, impairment of goodwill or long-lived assets, increased pension funding requirements due to a decline in pension asset values, impairment of our ability to develop, construct and/or operate electricity delivery facilities, and impairment of our ability to access funds from financial institutions and capital markets. COVID-19 has been declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization and has spread globally, including throughout the United States and Texas. The COVID-19 pandemic is currently impacting the global economy, communities, and supply chains around the world. COVID-19 has also adversely affected conditions in the capital and credit markets and may adversely affect our cost of and access to debt financing. To date, COVID-19 has not had a material adverse impact on our operations, supply chain, liquidity, financial condition, or results of operations. We have taken several precautionary and preemptive actions in response to COVID-19 to protect our workforce and critical operations pursuant to our pandemic response plan, including requiring employees to work remotely when possible and restricting non-essential employee travel. We are also actively managing our supply chain and communicating regularly with key vendors and suppliers.
We will continue to monitor the COVID-19 pandemic and its impacts and may take further actions that alter our business operations as may be required by federal, state or local authorities, or that we determine are in the best interests of our employees, customers and suppliers. The extent to which COVID-19 does impact our results will ultimately depend on future developments, which are highly uncertain, and will include emerging information concerning the severity of COVID-19, the duration of the pandemic, and the actions taken by governments and private businesses to attempt to contain COVID-19. Therefore, we cannot predict whether, or to what extent, the COVID-19 pandemic will have a material adverse impact on our operations, supply chain, liquidity, financial condition, or results of operations.
Attacks on our infrastructure or other events that disrupt or breach our cyber/data or physical security measures, as well as attacks on our third-party vendors, could have an adverse impact on our reputation, disrupt business operations and expose us to significant liabilities including penalties for failure to comply with federal, state or local statutes and regulations, which could have a material effect on our results of operations, liquidity and financial condition.
A breach of cyber/data security measures that impairs our information technology infrastructure or other loss of key technology platforms could disrupt normal business operations and affect our ability to control our transmission and distribution assets, access customer information and limit communication with third parties. In the ordinary course of business, we collect and retain sensitive information, including customer information and personal information about employees. We face various cyber and data risks, including malware, computer viruses, unauthorized access attempts, cyber or phishing attacks. While we have controls in place designed to protect our information technology infrastructure and are not aware of any significant breaches to date, any loss of confidential or proprietary data through a breach, including a breach involving one of our third-party vendors, could adversely affect our reputation, expose us to material legal and regulatory claims and fines, require compliance with notification and monitoring regulations, impair our ability to execute on business strategies and/or materially affect our results of operations, liquidity and financial condition.
A physical attack on our transmission and distribution infrastructure could also interfere with normal business operations and affect our ability to control our transmission and distribution assets. While we have security measures in place designed to protect our transmission and distribution system and have not had any significant security breaches, a physical security breach could adversely affect our reputation, expose us to material regulatory penalties and/or materially affect our results of operations, liquidity and financial condition.
We rely on third parties for various services. If these third parties experience cyber attacks, the services they provide us could be disrupted. This disruption could interfere with our ability to perform our obligations to others, which could negatively affect our financial condition and reputation. In addition, the theft, damage, or improper disclosure of sensitive data held by these third parties may subject us to further harm.
Under the Energy Policy Act of 2005, the FERC can impose penalties (up to $1 million per day per violation) for failure to comply with mandatory electric reliability standards, including standards to protect the power system against potential disruptions from cyber and physical security breaches.
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