so. Despite our efforts to comply with applicable laws, regulations, and other obligations relating to privacy, data protection and cybersecurity, it is possible that our interpretations of the law, practices, policies, or platform or other services or offerings could be inconsistent with, or fail or be alleged to fail to meet all requirements of, such laws, regulations, or obligations. Any failure, or consequences associated with our efforts to comply with applicable laws or regulations or any other obligations relating to privacy, data protection, or cybersecurity, or any compromise of security that results in unauthorized access to, or use or release of data relating to learners, instructors, or other individuals, or the perception that any of the foregoing types of failure or compromise has occurred, could damage our reputation, discourage new and existing learners, instructors, and UB customers from using our platform, or result in fines, investigations, or proceedings by governmental agencies and private claims and litigation, any of which could adversely affect our business, financial condition, and operating results. Even if not subject to legal challenge, the perception of concerns relating to privacy, data protection, or cybersecurity, whether or not valid, may harm our reputation and brand adversely affect our business, financial condition, and operating results.
A cybersecurity attack or other security breach or incident could delay or interrupt service to our learners, instructors, and UB customers, harm our reputation or subject us to significant liability.
Our platform involves the processing of significant amounts of data relating to the learners, instructors, and UB customers interacting with our platform, including personal data and personal information. Additionally, we collect and store certain sensitive and proprietary information, and personal data and personal information, in the operation of our business, including trade secrets, intellectual property, employee data, and other confidential data.
We engage third-party service providers to store and otherwise process certain data, including sensitive and personal information. Our service providers have been, and in the future may be, the targets of cyberattacks, malicious software, phishing schemes, fraud, and other risks to the confidentiality, security, and integrity of their systems and the data they process for us. Our ability to monitor our service providers’ cybersecurity is limited, and, in any event, third parties may be able to circumvent those security measures, resulting in the unauthorized access to, misuse, disclosure, loss, or destruction of data they process for us, including sensitive and personal information. There have been and may continue to be significant supply chain attacks, and we cannot guarantee that our or our third-party providers’ systems and networks have not been breached or that they do not contain exploitable defects or bugs that could result in a breach of or disruption to our systems and networks or the systems and networks of third parties that support us and our services.
While we have taken measures to protect our own proprietary and confidential information, as well as the personal information, personal data, and confidential information that we otherwise obtain, and measures to protect our platform, we, the networks and systems used in our business, including those of third-party service providers, we and our third-party service providers have experienced, and we, our service providers and our platform may in the future experience, cybersecurity attacks or other security breaches or incidents. Cybersecurity attacks may take the form of denial of service attacks, attacks using ransomware or other malware or other attacks, and can come from individual hackers, criminal groups, and state-sponsored organizations. These sources can also implement social engineering techniques to induce our employees, contractors, or customers to disclose passwords or other sensitive information or take other actions to gain access to data, and we and our platform otherwise may be subject to security breaches and incidents resulting from employee or contractor error or malfeasance. We may be more susceptible to cyberattacks and other security breaches and other security incidents while social distancing measures restricting the ability of our employees to work at our offices are in place to combat the COVID-19 pandemic because we have less capability to implement, monitor, and enforce our information security and data protection policies.
More generally, we cannot guarantee that applicable recovery systems, security protocols, network protection mechanisms, and other procedures of ourselves of our third-party service providers are or will be adequate to prevent network and service interruption, system failure or loss, corruption, or unauthorized access to, or disclosure or acquisition of, data, including personal data, personal information, and other sensitive information
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