Company: PSA-PH
Filing Date: 2025-02-24
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0001393311-25-000036
Chunk: 64

Company: Public Storage
Filing Date: 2025-02-24
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1A
Chunk 64
---
Our use of or failure to adopt advancements in information technology may hinder or prevent us from achieving strategic objectives or otherwise harm our business.

Our use of or inability to adopt and deliver new technological capabilities and enhancements in line with strategic objectives, including artificial intelligence and machine learning, may put us at a competitive disadvantage; cause us to miss opportunities to innovate, achieve efficiencies, or improve the customer experience; or adversely impact our business, reputation, results of operations, and financial condition.  Legislative activity in the privacy area may also result in new laws that are applicable to us and that may hinder our business, including by restricting our use of customer data or otherwise regulating the use of algorithms and automated processing in ways that could materially affect our business or lead to significant increases in the cost of compliance.  In addition, the use of emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence, entails risks including risks relating to the possibility of intellectual property infringement or misappropriation; data privacy; new or enhanced governmental or regulatory scrutiny, requirements, litigation, or other liability; ethical concerns; negative consumer perceptions as to automation and artificial intelligence; or other complications or liabilities that could adversely affect our business, reputation, results of operations, or financial results.

The failure or disruption of our computer and communications systems, on which we are heavily dependent, could significantly harm our business.

We are heavily dependent upon automated information technology and Internet commerce, with more than half of our new customers coming from the telephone or over the Internet. We centrally manage significant components of our operations with our computer systems, including our financial information, and we also rely extensively on third-party vendors to retain data, process transactions, and provide other systems services. These systems are subject to damage or interruption from power outages, system, network, internet and telecommunications failures, hackers, including through a ransomware attack, computer worms, viruses, and other destructive or disruptive cybersecurity incidents, and catastrophic events. Such incidents could also result in significant costs to repair or replace such networks or information systems, as well as actual monetary losses in case of a cybersecurity incident that resulted in fraudulent payments or other cash transactions. Our operations could be severely impacted by a natural disaster, terrorist attack, attack by hackers, acts of vandalism, data theft, misplaced or lost data, programming or human error, or other circumstance that results in a significant outage of our systems or those of our third party providers, despite our use of back up and redundancy measures. While we may be entitled to damages if our third-party providers fail to satisfy their security-related obligations to us, any award may