Company: FMCCN
Filing Date: 2025-02-13
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0001026214-25-000040
Chunk: 178

Company: FEDERAL HOME LOAN MORTGAGE CORP
Filing Date: 2025-02-13
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 15
Chunk 178
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 We may not be able to protect our systems and networks, or the confidentiality of our confidential or other information (including personal information), from cybersecurity incidents and other unauthorized access, disclosure, and disruption.

Our operations rely on the secure, accurate, and timely receipt, storage, transmission, and other processing of confidential and other information (including personal information) in our systems and networks and with counterparties (e.g., seller/servicers), vendors, service providers, and financial institutions. 

Cybersecurity risks for companies like ours continue to increase, in part because of the proliferation of new technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence-based technologies and methods, the use of the internet and telecommunications technologies to conduct financial transactions, and the increased sophistication and activities of organized crime, hackers, "hacktivists," terrorists, and other external parties, including nation-states and foreign state-sponsored actors. There have been several highly publicized cases involving financial services companies, consumer-based companies, and other organizations, including some of our counterparties, reporting the unauthorized disclosure, dissemination, theft, or destruction of client, customer, or other confidential information (including personal information), corporate information, intellectual property, cash, or other valuable assets. There have also been several highly publicized cases where hackers have requested "ransom" payments in exchange for not disclosing customer information (including personal information) or for not making the targets' computer systems unavailable. In addition, there have been cases where hackers have misled company personnel into making unauthorized transfers of funds to the hackers' accounts.

Like many companies and government entities, from time to time we have experienced, and expect to continue to experience, cybersecurity incidents. Such incidents may include software or hardware failure, malware, ransomware, denial-of-service attacks, social engineering, unauthorized access, human error, theft or misconduct, fraud, and phishing, any of which may be part of an effort to disrupt operations, potentially test cybersecurity capabilities, or obtain confidential, proprietary, or other 

FREDDIE MAC  |  2024 Form 10-K121

Risk Factors

information (including personal information). We could also be adversely affected by cybersecurity incidents that target the infrastructure of the internet, as such incidents could cause widespread unavailability of websites and degrade website performance. Our risk and exposure to these matters remain heightened because of, among other things, the evolving nature and increasing frequency, levels of persistence, sophistication, and intensity of these threats, our role in the financial services industry, the outsourcing of some of our business operations, and the current global economic and