Turns out the fastest way to get a company to consider paying a ransom isn’t calling the CEO – it’s targeting the 46-year-old IT manager.
That’s according to Zscaler, whose ThreatLabz researchers tracked 351 victims across 334 organizations caught up in a single ransomware campaign over the course of a month.
The data suggests today’s ransomware crews have become oddly specific about their preferred victim profile: nearly two-thirds of victims held manager-level titles or above, the average victim was a 46-year-old Gen Xer, and three-quarters worked in accounting and finance, sales, operations, HR, or marketing. Half worked in the industrial or IT sectors.
Read more…
Source: The Register News
Sign up for the Cyber Security Review Newsletter
The latest cyber security news and insights delivered right to your inbox
Related:
- Phishing campaign abuses Microsoft Azure Monitor alerts
March 23, 2026
Microsoft Azure Monitor is the latest in the long line of legitimate tools being abused in phishing attacks. If you are used to getting notifications from this platform, be careful, as the emails are quite convincing and relatively difficult to spot. Microsoft Azure Monitor is a cloud-based service that collects and analyzes data from applications and ...
- Trio-Tech International hit by ransomware attack
March 23, 2026
Trio-Tech International initially shrugged off a ransomware attack at a Singapore subsidiary as immaterial, only to reverse course days later after discovering stolen data had been disclosed. The California-based semiconductor testing and burn-in services outfit said it detected a ransomware incident at a Singapore subsidiary on March 11, which led to the encryption of “certain files” ...
- Three Supermicro employees charged with conspiracy to smuggle restricted Nvidia chips to China
March 20, 2026
A federal investigation has been launched after the US Department of Justice charged three individuals for allegedly smuggling restricted Nvidia AI chips to China. The three men were not named in court documents, however a statement released by Super Micro Computer Inc. identified those involved. The smuggling allegedly occurred between 2024 and 2025, with billions of ...
- CVE-2026-31381, CVE-2026-31382: Gainsight Assist Information Disclosure and Cross-Site Scripting (FIXED)
March 20, 2026
Rapid7 Labs recently identified a chain of security vulnerabilities in the Gainsight Assist plugin and its interactions with the associated domain app.gainsight.com. These vulnerabilities include an Information Disclosure flaw (CVE-2026-31381) and a Reflected Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerability (CVE-2026-31382). By chaining these vulnerabilities, an attacker can move from passive information gathering to active client-side exploitation. The XSS ...
- Russian Intelligence Services Target Commercial Messaging Application Accounts
March 20, 2026
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) are jointly issuing this public service announcement (PSA) to warn the public about ongoing phishing campaigns by cyber actors associated with the Russian Intelligence Services (RIS) targeting commercial messaging applications (CMAs). RIS actors have compromised individual CMA accounts, but not CMAs’ encryption ...
- Government of Iran Cyber Actors Deploy Telegram C2 to Push Malware to Identified Targets
March 20, 2026
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is releasing this FLASH to disseminate information on malicious cyber activity conducted by actors on behalf of the Government of Iran Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS). Specifically, MOIS cyber actors are responsible for using Telegram as a command-and-control (C2) infrastructure to push malware targeting Iranian dissidents, journalists opposed to ...