Uber has hired Philip Martin as its new Chief Information Security Officer, bringing in a security veteran with a background that spans Coinbase, Palantir, Amazon, and the U.S. Army.
Martin spent eight years at Coinbase as Chief Security Officer, leading a global team of more than 250 people across cybersecurity, Trust & Safety, physical security, risk, and compliance. Before that, he built and ran Incident Response and Security Engineering teams at Palantir and worked on virtual infrastructure at Amazon’s A9.
He also spent a decade as a U.S. Army counterintelligence agent and Arabic linguist, serving in both tactical and strategic roles stateside and overseas.
Martin put it bluntly on LinkedIn: “Very few companies are responsible for real people moving through the real world at Uber’s scale, every minute of every day. Security at many companies protects data. At Uber, it also protects trips, riders, drivers, and couriers.”
It’s a smart hire. Uber’s physical footprint and real-world safety component make its security challenges fundamentally different from a pure tech platform. Martin’s mix of military discipline and startup security leadership seems like a good fit for that problem.
