Uber's former chief security officer has avoided jail and been sentenced to three years' probation for covering up a cyber-attack from authorities. Joseph Sullivan was found guilty of paying hackers $100,000 (?79,000) after they gained access to 57 million records of Uber customers, including names and phone numbers.

The most prominent former head of security for Uber is Joe Sullivan, who served as the company's Chief Security Officer (CSO) from 2015 to 2017. Sullivan's tenure became the subject of intense global scrutiny following a massive 2016 data breach that compromised the records of 57 million users. In a landmark legal case, Sullivan was convicted in 2022 of "obstruction of justice" and "misprision of a felony" for his role in concealing the breach from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and for allegedly funneling a $100,000 "bug bounty" payment to the hackers to keep them quiet. He was sentenced in 2023 to three years of probation, a sentence that sent shockwaves through the cybersecurity industry, as it was the first time a corporate executive was held criminally liable for the handling of a data breach. Before his time at Uber, Sullivan was a former federal prosecutor and a well-respected security leader at Facebook, making his fall from grace a cautionary tale for "C-suite" security professionals worldwide.