Company: CNTB
Filing Date: 2025-03-31
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0001835268-25-000014
Chunk: 146

Company: Connect Biopharma Holdings Ltd
Filing Date: 2025-03-31
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1A
Chunk 146
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 and Confidential Information. In particular, we face numerous and evolving cybersecurity risks that threaten the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of our IT Systems and Confidential Information. Our IT Systems and those of our current and future CROs and other contractors, consultants, vendors and collaborators (collectively “Third Parties”) may fail and are vulnerable to cybersecurity incidents, attacks, breakdowns, data breaches, interruption or damage from computer viruses, bugs, misconfigurations, or other exploited vulnerabilities in commercial software that is integrated in our IT Systems, and malware (e.g., ransomware), cybersecurity threats, computer hackers, social engineering/phishing, fraud, degradation of service attacks, malicious code, human error or malfeasance, theft or misuse, distributed denial-of-service attacks, sophisticated nation-state and nation-state-supported actors, unauthorized access, natural disasters, terrorism, war, fire and telecommunication and electrical failures. Such IT Systems, including corporate firewalls, servers and connection to the Internet, face the risk of systemic failure that could disrupt our operations. 

Cybersecurity incidents, including cyberattacks, cybersecurity breaches, computer viruses, malware and other incidents could cause misappropriation, loss or other unauthorized disclosure of Confidential Information. Increasingly complex methods, including through the use of artificial intelligence, have been used in cyberattacks, including ransomware, phishing, structured query language injections and distributed denial-of-service attacks. For example, in May 2021, we experienced a phishing attack through the e-mail account of one of our employees. The threat actor successfully sent a payment request which was eventually processed. Though we recovered some of the loss from our cybersecurity insurance provider, the incident resulted in certain financial losses that we were not able to fully recover from our provider. The risk of a data security breach or disruption has generally increased as the number, intensity and sophistication of attempted attacks and intrusions from around the world have increased in the recent years. 

Further, as a result of continued hybrid working environment, we may also face increased cybersecurity risks due to our reliance on internet and cloud technologies. We are dependent upon our IT Systems to operate our business, given the number of our employees who are working remotely, and such dependence may create additional opportunities for cybercriminals to exploit vulnerabilities. The techniques used by cybercriminals 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, hacktivists, terrorist organizations or hostile foreign governments or agencies. As such, we may also