Item 1B. Unresolved Staff Comments
ITEM 1B. UNRESOLVED STAFF COMMENTS
Not applicable.
ITEM 1C. CYBERSECURITY
Cybersecurity Risk Management and Strategy
We have developed and implemented a cybersecurity risk management program intended to protect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of our critical systems and information.
We design and assess our program based on the National Institute of Standards and Technology Cybersecurity Framework (“NIST CSF”). This does not imply that we meet any particular technical standards, specifications, or requirements, only that we use the NIST CSF as a guide to help us identify, assess, and manage cybersecurity risks relevant to our business.
Our cybersecurity risk management program is integrated into our overall enterprise risk management program, and shares common methodologies, reporting channels and governance processes that apply across the enterprise risk management program to other legal, compliance, strategic, operational, and financial risk areas.
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Key elements of our cybersecurity risk management program include but are not limited to the following:
• risk assessments designed to help identify material risks from cybersecurity threats to our critical systems, and information;
• a security team principally responsible for managing (i) our cybersecurity risk assessment processes, (ii) our security controls, and (iii) our response to cybersecurity incidents;
• the use of external service providers, where appropriate, to assess, test or otherwise assist with aspects of our security processes;
• cybersecurity awareness training of our employees, including incident response personnel, and senior management;
• a cybersecurity incident response plan that includes procedures for responding to cybersecurity incidents; and
• a third-party risk management process for key service providers, based on our assessment of their criticality to our operations and respective risk profile.
For more information, see “ Cybersecurity breaches, loss of data and other disruptions could compromise sensitive information related to our business or prevent us from accessing critical information and expose us to liability, which could adversely affect our business and our reputation. ” in the “ Risk Factors ” section above.
Cybersecurity Governance
Our Board considers cybersecurity risk as part of its risk oversight function and has delegated to the Audit Committee (“Committee”) oversight of cybersecurity risks, including oversight of management’s implementation of our cybersecurity risk management program. Th e Committee receives periodic reports from management on our cybersecurity risks. In addition, management updates the Committee, where it deems appropriate, regarding any cybersecurity incidents it considers to be significant or potentially significant.
The Committee reports to the full Board regarding its activities, including those related to cybersecurity. The full Board also receives briefings from management on our cyber risk management program. Board members receive presentations on cybersecurity topics from our internal security staff or external experts as part of the Board’s continuing education on topics that impact public companies. Our management te am, including our Chief Legal Officer, Secretary and Compliance Officer , is responsible for assessing and managing our material risks from cybersecu rity threats. The team has primary responsibility for our overall cybersecurity risk management program and supervises both our internal cybersecurity personnel and our retained external cybersecurity consultants. Our management team includes IT staff such as a Director of IT with more than 22 years of IT-related experience in various roles including managing information security, managing privacy and data protection, evaluating cybersecurity risks, developing cybersecurity strategy, and implementing cybersecurity programs, as well as a dedicated Information Security Manager, responsible for operational IT security initiatives.
Our management team takes steps to stay informed about and monitor efforts to prevent, detect, mitigate, and remediate cybersecurity risks and incidents through various means, which may include briefings from internal security personnel; threat intelligence and other information obtained from governmental, public or private sources, including external consultants engaged by us; and alerts and reports produced by security tools deployed in the information technology environment.
In addition, our management team periodically evaluates and tests the effectiveness of our cybersecurity controls and incident response capabilities through internal reviews and, where appropriate, engagement of external specialists. These efforts may include security assessments, penetration testing, resilience and recovery exercises, and employee awareness initiatives designed to enhance preparedness against evolving threats, including ransomware and social engineering.