Why managers are ransomware's top targets now - and 6 ways to stay safe
Tech Home Tech Security Why managers are ransomware's top targets now - and 6 ways to stay safe Almost two-thirds of the victims targeted in a single ransomware campaign held managerial positions or higher. Written by Lance Whitney, ContributorContributor Aug. Those employees are often the ones with special privileges or higher levels of access that attackers can exploit to reach confidential resources.
- ▪Tech Home Tech Security Why managers are ransomware's top targets now - and 6 ways to stay safe Almost two-thirds of the victims targeted in a single ransomware campaign held managerial positions or higher.
- ▪Written by Lance Whitney, ContributorContributor Aug.
- ▪Those employees are often the ones with special privileges or higher levels of access that attackers can exploit to reach confidential resources.
ZDNet files mainly under tech. We currently carry 381 of its stories.
Story provenance
Source · retrieval · rights · ranking — open for full record
inspect →
Story provenance
Attribution is not the same as permission. This drawer separates discovery metadata, excerpts, WeSearch-generated summaries, reuse status, and whether the publisher receives the visit. Nothing here claims a legal grant the publisher has not made.
Record
| Original publisher | ZDNet |
| Canonical URL | https://www.zdnet.com/article/managers-biggest-ransomware-targets-ways-to-stay-safe/ |
| Publication time | Mon, 10 Aug 2026 16:08:17 GMT |
| Retrieval time | 2026-08-10T16:10:42.180Z |
| Last seen | 2026-08-10T16:10:42.180Z |
| 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 | ZvVLUw8x1zkL · 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
Tech Home Tech Security Why managers are ransomware's top targets now - and 6 ways to stay safe Almost two-thirds of the victims targeted in a single ransomware campaign held managerial positions or higher. Written by Lance Whitney, ContributorContributor Aug. 10, 2026 at 9:08 a.m. PT Eugene Mymrin/ Moment via Getty ImagesFollow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google.ZDNET's key takeawaysManagers were the prime targets in a single ransomware campaign.Managers often have special privileges, making them tempting targets.Training and network security are key to preventing such attacks.Ransomware attacks don't just target specific organizations but also specific employees.
…
Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at ZDNet.
Discussion
0 commentsMore from ZDNet
