Uber hires first chief privacy officer in light of GDPR
Ruby Zefo, who was hired as chief privacy officer, will be based in San Francisco and is expected to start August 6, according to an email sent to Uber employees Wednesday. Zefo led Intel’s global privacy and security legal team. She also serves on the board of directors for the International Association of Privacy Professionals.
Uber has been working toward the CPO role for some time. The company has had privacy experts working in various departments, such as engineering and legal. These folks were responsible for a variety of protections, such as privacy settings available to riders in its app and a platform to protect big data analysis.
Now Uber has brought on an executive to pull together privacy standards, procedures and processes in every market where it operates.
Uber has also hired Simon Hania as its data protection officer, as mandated under the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation. Hania, who will report directly to Uber’s chief legal officer Tony West, is there to make sure Uber complies with EU privacy laws. The company previously used an outside firm in the Netherlands to handle this job. Hania is Uber’s first DPO hire.
Hania previously worked at TomTom, where he was vice president of privacy and security and focused on connected and autonomous vehicles, and wearable technologies.
*This article is by Kristen Korosec (@kristenkorosec) and was originally published on TechCrunch.com