Zscaler Finds 62% of 351 Ransomware Victims Were Managers Across 334 Organizations
Updated
Updated · ZDNet · Aug 10
Zscaler Finds 62% of 351 Ransomware Victims Were Managers Across 334 Organizations
3 articles · Updated · ZDNet · Aug 10
Summary
351 victims across 334 organizations were identified in a monthlong ransomware campaign, with 62% of targeted employees holding manager-level titles or higher, Zscaler ThreatLabz said.
Managers were singled out because their accounts often carry elevated network and business privileges, giving attackers access to sensitive records, approvals, budgets, contracts and cross-department workflows.
About three-quarters of the targets worked in finance, sales, operations, HR or marketing, and half of the affected organizations were in industrial or IT sectors; more than a dozen organizations saw multiple employees targeted.
ThreatLabz said defenses should focus on blocking unsolicited external messages in Teams and Slack, training staff to verify fake IT requests, tightening endpoint and network monitoring, and enforcing least-privilege and zero-trust access.