Capital One 2013 Annual Report Download - page 37

EMPLOYEES
A central part of our philosophy is to attract and retain a highly capable staff. We had 41,951 employees, whom
we refer to as “associates,” as of December 31, 2013. None of our associates are covered under a collective
bargaining agreement, and management considers our associate relations to be satisfactory.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Geographic Diversity
Our consumer loan portfolios, including credit cards, are diversified across the United States with modest
concentration in California, Texas, New York, Florida, and Illinois. We also have credit card loans in the U.K.
and Canada. Our commercial loan portfolio is aligned to our branch footprint with concentrated in New York,
Texas, Louisiana and New Jersey with some broader diversification across the United States driven by our
specialty business. See “MD&A—Credit Risk Profile” and “Note 4—Loans” for additional information.
Technology/Systems
We leverage information technology to achieve our business objectives and to develop and deliver products and
services that satisfy our customers’ needs. A key part of our strategic focus is the development of efficient,
flexible computer and operational systems to support complex marketing and account management strategies, the
servicing of our customers, and the development of new and diversified products. We believe that the continued
development and integration of these systems is an important part of our efforts to reduce costs, improve quality
and provide faster, more flexible technology services. Consequently, we continuously review capabilities and
develop or acquire systems, processes and competencies to meet our unique business requirements.
As part of our continuous efforts to review and improve our technologies, we may either develop such
capabilities internally or rely on third party outsourcers who have the ability to deliver technology that is of
higher quality, lower cost, or both. Over time, we have increasingly relied on third party outsourcers to help us
deliver systems and operational infrastructure. These relationships include (but are not limited to): Total System
Services Inc. (“TSYS”) for processing services for our North American and United Kingdom portfolios of
consumer and small business credit card accounts, Fidelity Information Services (“FIS”) for the Capital One
banking systems and IBM Corporation for management of our North American data centers.
To protect our systems and technologies, we employ security, backup and recovery systems and generally require
the same of our third-party service providers. In addition, we perform, or cause to be performed, a variety of
vulnerability and penetration testing on the platforms, systems and applications used to provide our products and
services in an effort to ensure that any attacks on these platforms, systems and applications are unlikely to
succeed. Despite these controls, Capital One, along with several other U.S. financial services providers, was
targeted on several occasions with distributed denial-of-service (“DDOS”) attacks from sophisticated third
parties that succeeded, on a few occasions, in temporarily limiting our ability to service customers through online
platforms.
Intellectual Property
As part of our overall and ongoing strategy to protect and enhance our intellectual property, we rely on a variety
of protections, including copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets, patents and certain restrictions on disclosure,
solicitation, and competition. We also undertake other measures to control access to and distribution of our other
proprietary information. Despite these precautions, it may be possible for a third party to copy or otherwise
obtain and use certain intellectual property or proprietary information without authorization. Our precautions
may not prevent misappropriation or infringement of our intellectual property or proprietary information. In
addition, our competitors and other third parties also file patent applications for innovations that are used in our
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