Natural disasters and severe weather conditions could delay deliveries, increase costs and decrease demand for homes in affected areas.
Several of our markets, specifically our operations in Florida, North Carolina and Texas, are situated in geographical areas that are regularly impacted by severe storms, including hurricanes, flooding and tornadoes. In addition, our operations in the Northern Region can be impacted by severe storms, including tornadoes. The occurrence of these or other natural disasters can cause delays in the completion of, or increase the cost of, developing one or more of our communities, and as a result could materially and adversely impact our results of operations.
Information technology failures and data security breaches could harm our business.
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 cyber-security risks, secure our information technology, applications and computer systems, and prevent unauthorized access to or loss of sensitive, confidential and personal data. We also 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. 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 level standards. We also rely upon 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 informational technology and computer resources, including our website, 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 cyber-attacks, 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 position, 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.
We depend on the services of certain key employees, and the loss of their services could hurt our business.
Our success depends, in part, on our ability to attract, train and retain skilled personnel. If we are unable to retain our key employees or attract, train and retain other skilled personnel in the future, our operations could be materially and adversely impacted and we may incur additional expenses to identify and train new personnel.
21