text: **Even if we take appropriate measures to safeguard our information security and privacy environment from security breaches, our**
  **customers and our business could still be exposed to risk.**
  Our Retail and Credit segments involve the collection, storage and transmission of customers’ personal information, consumer preferences 
  and credit card information. In addition, our operations involve the collection, storage and transmission of employee information and company 
  financial and strategic data. Any measures we implement to prevent a security or cybersecurity threat may not be totally effective and may 
  have the potential to harm relations with our customers or decrease activity on our websites by making them more difficult to use. In addition, 
  the regulatory environment surrounding information security, cybersecurity and privacy is increasingly demanding, with new and constantly 
  changing requirements. Security breaches and cyber incidents and their remediation, whether at our company, our third-party providers or 
  other retailers, could expose us to a risk of loss or misappropriation of this information, litigation, potential liability, reputation damage and 
  loss of customers’ trust and business, which could adversely impact our sales. Any such breaches or incidents could subject us to 
  investigation, notification and remediation costs, and if there is additional information that is later discovered related to such security breach 
  or incident, there could be further loss of customers’ trust and business, based upon their reactions to this additional information. Additionally, 
  as a credit card issuer, we could be subject to credit card fraud losses due to external credit card fraud. 