Our business is reliant upon financial, accounting and technology systems and networks to process, transmit and store information, including sensitive client and proprietary information, and to conduct many business activities and transactions with clients, advisers, vendors and other third parties. We collect, use, and retain large amounts of confidential personal and financial information from our clients. Maintaining the integrity of our systems and networks is critical to the success of our business operations, including the retention of our clients and financial professionals, and to the protection of our proprietary information and our clients' personal information. The failure to implement, maintain and safeguard an infrastructure commensurate with the size and scope of our business could impede our productivity and growth, which could adversely impact our results of operations and financial condition. Extraordinary trading volumes, malware, ransomware or attempts by hackers to introduce large volumes of fraudulent transactions into our systems, beyond reasonably foreseeable spikes in volumes, could cause our computer systems to operate at an unacceptably slow speed or even fail. A major breach or failure of our systems or those of our third-party service providers or partners, which could result from these or other events beyond our control, or an inability or failure to effectively upgrade those systems or implement new technology-driven products or services, may have materially negative consequences for our business, including possible fines, penalties and damages, unanticipated disruptions in or reduced demand for our services, harm to our reputation and brands, further regulation and oversight by federal or state agencies, and loss of our ability to provide financial transaction services.
Cybersecurity requires ongoing investment and diligence against evolving threats and is subject to federal and state regulation relating to the protection of confidential information. We may be required to expend significant additional resources to modify our protective measures, to investigate and remediate vulnerabilities or other exposures, to make required notifications, or to update our technologies, websites and web based applications to comply with industry and regulatory standards, but we may not have adequate personnel, financial or other resources to fully meet these threats and evolving standards. We will also be required to effectively and efficiently govern, manage and ensure timely evolutions in our systems, including in their design, architecture and interconnections as well as their organizational and technical protections.
We may detect, or we may receive notices from clients, financial professionals, service providers or public or private agencies that they have detected, vulnerabilities or current or potential failures in our operating systems, our network infrastructure, or our software. The existence of vulnerabilities, even if they do not result in a security breach or system failure, may harm client confidence and require substantial resources to address, and we may not be able to discover or remediate such vulnerabilities, breaches, or failures. Additionally, any system interruptions that result in the unavailability or unreliability of our websites, transaction processing systems, or network infrastructure could materially reduce our revenue and impair our ability to properly process transactions. Any system unavailability or unreliability may cause unanticipated system disruptions, slower response times, degradation in client satisfaction, additional expense, or delays in reporting accurate financial information.
In addition, hackers may develop and deploy viruses, worms, and other malicious software programs that can be used to attack our or our third-party service providers' operating systems and network infrastructure. Any such incident could cause a Material Adverse Effect and require us to expend significant resources to address these problems, including notification under data privacy regulations. In addition, our employees (including temporary and seasonal employees) and contractors may have access to sensitive and personal information of our financial professionals, clients, and employees. We conduct background checks on our employees and contractors and limit access to systems and data, but it is possible that one or more of these individuals may circumvent these controls, resulting in a security breach. It is also possible that unauthorized access to or disclosure of client data may occur due to inadequate use of security controls by our clients. Unauthorized persons could gain access to client accounts if clients do not maintain effective access controls of their systems and software.
Although we take protective measures and endeavor to modify them as circumstances warrant, our computer systems, software and networks are to some degree vulnerable to unauthorized access, human error, computer viruses, denial-of-service attacks, malicious code, spam attacks, phishing, ransomware or other forms of social engineering and other events that could impact the security, reliability, confidentiality, integrity and availability of our systems. To the extent third parties, such as product sponsors, also retain similarly sensitive information about our advisors or their clients, their systems may face similar vulnerabilities. We are not able to protect against these events completely given the rapid evolution of new vulnerabilities, the complex and distributed nature of our systems, our interdependence on the systems of other companies and the increased sophistication of potential attack vectors and methods against our systems. In particular, advisors work in a wide variety of environments, and although we require compliance with our security policies, we cannot ensure the consistent compliance with these policies across all of our advisors, or that our policy will be adequate to address the evolving threat environment. In addition, even if we and our advisors comply with our policies and procedures, persons who circumvent security measures or bypass authentication controls could infiltrate or damage our systems or facilities and wrongfully use our confidential information or clients' confidential information or cause interruptions or malfunctions in our operations. Cyber-attacks can be designed to collect information, manipulate, destroy or corrupt data, applications, or accounts and to disable the functioning or use of applications or technology assets. If one or more of these events occur, they could jeopardize our own, our advisors' or their clients', or our counterparties' confidential and other information processed, stored in and transmitted through our computer systems and networks, or otherwise cause interruptions or malfunctions in our own, our advisors' or their clients', our counterparties', or third parties' operations. As a result, we could be subject to litigation, client loss, reputational harm, liability for a failure to safeguard client date, the termination of relationships with our advisors, regulatory sanctions and financial losses that are either not insured or are not fully covered through any insurance we maintain. If any person, including any of our employees or advisors, negligently disregards or intentionally breaches our established controls with respect to client data, or otherwise mismanages or misappropriates that data, we could also be subject to significant monetary damages, regulatory enforcement actions, fines and/or criminal prosecution in one or more jurisdictions.
As malicious cyber activity escalates, including activity that originates outside of the United States, the risks we face relating to transmission of data and our use of service providers outside of our network, as well as the storing or processing of data within our network, intensify. We maintain cyber liability insurance that provides both third-party liability and first-party liability coverages, but this insurance is subject to exclusions and may not be sufficient to protect us against all losses. In addition, the trend toward broad consumer and general public notification of such incidents could exacerbate the harm to our business, financial condition, or results of operations. Even if we successfully protect our technology infrastructure and the confidentiality of sensitive data, we may incur significant expenses in connection with our responses to any such attacks as well as the adoption, implementation, and maintenance of appropriate security measures. We could also suffer harm to our business and reputation if attempted security breaches are publicized. We cannot be certain that advances in criminal capabilities, discovery of new vulnerabilities, attempts to exploit vulnerabilities in our systems, data thefts, physical system or network break-ins, inappropriate access, or other developments will not compromise or breach the technology or other security measures protecting the networks and systems used in connection with our business.
We rely on third-party vendors to provide a variety of services and host and store certain of our sensitive and personal information and data through co-location facilities and cloud services. We may not have the ability to effectively monitor or oversee the implementation of the security and control measures utilized by our third-party partners, and, in any event, individuals or third parties may be able to circumvent and/or exploit vulnerabilities that may exist in these security and business controls, resulting in a loss of sensitive and personal client or employee information and data. We expect that our regulators would hold us responsible for any deficiencies in our oversight and control of our third-party relationships and for the performance of such third parties. If there were deficiencies in the oversight and control of our third-party relationships, and if our regulators held us responsible for those deficiencies, our business, reputation and results of operations could be adversely affected. Additionally, our systems, operations, data centers and cloud services, and those of our third-party service providers and partners, could be susceptible to damage or disruption, including in cases of fire, flood, earthquakes, other natural disasters, power loss, telecommunications failure, internet breakdown, break-in, human error, software bugs, hardware failures, malicious attacks, computer viruses, computer denial of service attacks, terrorist attacks, or other events beyond our control. Such damage or disruption may affect internal and external systems that we rely upon to provide our services, take and fulfill client orders, handle client service requests, and host other products and services.
During the period in which any of our services or products are unavailable, we could be unable or severely limited in our ability to generate revenues, and we may also be exposed to liability from those third parties to whom we provide such services or products. We could face significant losses as a result of these events, and our business interruption insurance may not be adequate to compensate us for all potential losses, which could result in a Material Adverse Effect. We have business continuity plans that include secondary disaster recovery centers, but if their primary data centers fail and those disaster recovery centers do not fully restore the failed environments, our business could suffer.