SAN FRANCISCO/WASHINGTON – Three senior managers in Uber Technologies Inc’s security unit resigned on Friday, an Uber spokesperson said, days after the company’s new chief executive officer disclosed a massive data breach and criticized past security practices.
Uber’s CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, who was installed in the top job in August, disclosed the data breach last month shortly after learning of it himself, saying that “none of this should have happened.” Uber’s security practices are also under scrutiny in a high-stakes legal battle with self-driving car company Waymo, an Alphabet Inc subsidiary.
Uber last week said it fired its chief security officer, Joe Sullivan, over his role in the 2016 data breach, which compromised data belonging to 57 million customers and about 600,000 drivers. The resignations Friday came amid mounting frustration within Uber’s security team over Sullivan’s dismissal and the company’s handling of the public disclosure of the breach.
The three managers who resigned were Pooja Ashok, chief of staff for Sullivan; Prithvi Rai, a senior security engineer and the number two manager in the department; and Jeff Jones, who handled physical security, the Uber spokesperson said. Ashok and Jones will remain at the company until January to assist in transition, the spokesperson said.
A fourth individual, Uber’s head of Global Threat Operations, Mat Henley, began a three-month medical leave, said a separate source familiar with the situation. The departures include most of Sullivan’s direct reports.
saying that human surveillance of individuals would no longer be tolerated.
West said he did not believe the activity was illegal, “but, to be crystal clear, to the extent anyone is working on any kind of competitive intelligence project that involves the surveillance of individuals, stop it now.”
