asserting our rights, those actions could have a significant impact on our business, including the imposition of significant civil, criminal and administrative penalties, damages, fines, disgorgement, imprisonment, exclusion from government funded healthcare programs, such as Medicare, Medicaid and other federal healthcare programs, contractual damages, reputational harm, diminished profits and future earnings, additional integrity reporting and oversight obligations, and the curtailment or restructuring of our operations, any of which could adversely affect our ability to operate our business and our results of operations.
We are a virtual company and our business depends on the efficient and uninterrupted operation of our information technology systems and those of our third-party CROs, CMOs, or other vendors, contractors or consultants, may fail or suffer security breaches, cyberattacks, loss or leakage of data and other disruptions, which could result in a material disruption of our development programs, compromise sensitive information related to our business or prevent us from accessing critical information, potentially exposing us to liability or otherwise adversely affecting our business.
We are a virtual company, our business success depends on the security and efficient and uninterrupted operation of our information technology systems, and we may be unable to adequately protect our information technology systems from cyberattacks, which could result in the disclosure of confidential information, damage our reputation, and subject us to significant financial and legal exposure. We are increasingly dependent upon information technology systems, infrastructure and data to operate our business. In the ordinary course of business, we collect, store and transmit confidential information (including but not limited to intellectual property, proprietary business information, personal health information and sensitive personal information). It is critical that we do so in a secure manner to maintain the confidentiality and integrity of such confidential information. We also have outsourced elements of our operations to third parties, and as a result we manage a number of third-party CROs, CMOs, vendors, and other contractors and consultants who have access to our confidential information. System failures or outages could compromise our ability to perform these functions in a timely manner, which could harm our ability to conduct business or delay our financial reporting.
Despite the implementation of security measures, given their size and complexity and the increasing amounts of confidential information that they maintain, our internal information technology systems and those of our third-party CROs, CMOs, vendors and other contractors and consultants are potentially vulnerable to breakdown or other damage or interruption from service interruptions, system malfunction, accidents by our employees or third-party service providers, natural disasters, terrorism, war, global pandemics, and telecommunication and electrical failures, as well as security breaches from inadvertent or intentional actions by our employees, third-party CROs, CMOs, vendors, contractors, consultants, business partners and/or other third parties, or from cyberattacks or supply chain attacks by malicious third parties (including the deployment of harmful malware, ransomware, denial-of-service attacks, social engineering and other means to affect service reliability and threaten the confidentiality, integrity and availability of information), which may compromise our system infrastructure, or that of our third-party CROs, CMOs, vendors and other contractors and consultants, or lead to data leakage. The risk of a security breach or disruption, particularly through cyberattacks or cyber intrusion, including by computer hackers, foreign governments, and cyber terrorists, has generally increased as the number, intensity, and sophistication of attempted attacks and intrusions from around the world have increased. A shift toward remote work arrangements during and as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic has generally increased the attack surface available for exploitation, and the risk of a cybersecurity incident occurring, and our investment in risk mitigations against such an incident, are increasing. For example, there has been an increase in phishing and spam email attacks as well as social engineering attempts from “hackers” hoping to use remote work arrangements to their advantage. We may not be able to anticipate all types of security threats, nor implement preventive measures effective against all such security threats. The techniques used by cyber criminals change frequently, may not be recognized until launched and can originate from a wide variety of sources, including outside groups such as external service providers, organized crime affiliates, terrorist organizations, or hostile foreign governments or agencies. Any breach, loss or compromise of clinical trial participant personal data may also subject us to civil fines and penalties, including under HIPAA, and other relevant state and federal privacy laws in the United States. If the information technology systems of our third-party CROs, CMOs, vendors and other contractors and consultants become subject to disruptions or security breaches, we may have insufficient recourse against such third parties and we may have to expend significant resources to mitigate the impact of such an event, and to develop and implement protections to prevent future events of this nature from occurring.
While we have not experienced any such system failure, accident or security breach to date, we cannot assure you that our data protection efforts and our investment in information technology will prevent significant breakdowns, data leakages,