Yahoo Finance Uber hires first chief privacy officer ahead of planned IPO next year
Ride hailing company Uber has hired its first chief privacy officer and data protection officer, as it bulks up its leadership team ahead of an initial public offering next year.
Uber said Ruby Zefo would start in the new chief privacy officer post on August 6, joining from Intel where she had served as chief privacy and security counsel.
It said she filled a "critical global role responsible for the development and implementation of privacy standards, procedures and processes in every market where we operate".
In the internal email, Uber also named TomTom executive Simon Hania as its new data protection officer – a role mandated by General Data Protection Regulation laws, which were introduced in May and restrict how companies can use the personal information of Europeans.
Uber said, in his post which he will start in autumn, he will "independently oversee Uber's compliance with EU data protection laws".
The hires come after a series of embarrassing data blunders at the ride hailing company, the most recent being its 2016 security breach which affected 57 million people worldwide and which it had covered up for more than a year.
Information including names, phone numbers and email addresses were exposed in the leak in October 2016, but news of it only emerged late last year, as, instead of informing users, Uber paid the hackers $100,000 (£76,500) to delete the data and keep the breach quiet.
It had meant the settlement deal Uber had agreed with the US Federal Trade Commission, over a separate security breach in 2014, had to be expanded to "ensure that Uber does not engage in similar misconduct in the future".
Under the deal, Uber is required to keep records related to bug bounty reports, as well as submit audits of its security systems on a regular basis.
The revelations over the 2016 breach came as yet another speed bump in what had proved an already-tumultuous period for Uber, in which its co-founder Travis Kalanick resigned and allegations emerged over sexual harassment at the company.
After investigating 215 allegations over sexual harassment and other workplace misconduct last summer, Uber fired 20 people and reprimanded more than 40 others.
However, Dara Khosrowshahi, who took over the CEO role from Mr Kalanick last September, has taken steps to restore stability at the company, and improve transparency. It was only after he joined that the second breach was disclosed.
The two additions to Uber's leadership team, announced on Wednesday, follow the hiring of its first chief compliance officer last week, and come as Uber readies for a float in the second half of next year.
Speaking to CNBC last month, Mr Khosrowshahi said the company was on track with its IPO plans, saying: "Lots of things can happen in the world but we have a reasonable buffer as well, so I think we're in a pretty good spot."
