Ransomware gangs skip the CEO, head straight for the 40-something IT manager
REG AD googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('labrador/thereg/article/desktop/b'); }); Rather than blasting the same extortion email across an organization, attackers are doing their homework first. Zscaler says they combine information from compromised systems with publicly available data to map reporting lines and identify the employees most likely to influence a company's response. REG AD googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('labrador/thereg/article/desktop/c'); }); "The ransomware landscape has shifted from indiscriminate attacks to highly targeted extortion campaigns," the security outfit wrote.
- ▪REG AD googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('labrador/thereg/article/desktop/b'); }); Rather than blasting the same extortion email across an organization, attackers are doing their homework first.
- ▪Zscaler says they combine information from compromised systems with publicly available data to map reporting lines and identify the employees most likely to influence a company's response.
- ▪REG AD googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('labrador/thereg/article/desktop/c'); }); "The ransomware landscape has shifted from indiscriminate attacks to highly targeted extortion campaigns," the security outfit wrote.
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Story provenance
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Record
| Original publisher | The Register |
| Canonical URL | https://www.theregister.com/security/2026/08/09/ransomware-gangs-skip-the-ceo-head-straight-for-the-40-something-it-manager/5284499 |
| Publication time | Sun, 09 Aug 2026 11:33:00 +0200 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-08-09T09:35:42.463Z |
| Last seen | 2026-08-09T09:35:42.463Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | Yf0jpX0438mG · 1 stories |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
(function() { let windowUrl = window.location.href; windowUrl = windowUrl.substring(windowUrl.indexOf('?') + 1); let messageElement = document.querySelector('.shareableMessage'); if (windowUrl && windowUrl.includes('code') && windowUrl.includes('expires')) { messageElement.style.display = 'block'; } })(); security Ransomware gangs skip the CEO, head straight for the 40-something IT manager Gen Xers who feel triggered by this should remember to unplug the network cable and call the cops Carly Page Carly Page Published sun 9 Aug 2026 // 10:33 UTC 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…
Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at The Register.
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