--- title: Ransomware gangs skip the CEO, head straight for the... description: Ransomware gangs are increasingly targeting mid-level IT managers in their 40s rather than C-suite executives, according to new research. The piece highlights... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/ransomware-gangs-skip-the-ceo-head-straight-for-the-40-something-it-manager-iwngm3nal twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Ransomware gangs skip the CEO, head straight for the 40-something IT manager | daily.dev og:description: Ransomware gangs are increasingly targeting mid-level IT managers in their 40s rather than C-suite executives, according to new research. The piece highlights... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/ransomware-gangs-skip-the-ceo-head-straight-for-the-40-something-it-manager-iwngm3nal og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/IWnGM3nAl.png og:image:alt: Ransomware gangs skip the CEO, head straight for the 40-something IT manager og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Ransomware gangs skip the CEO, head straight for the 40-something IT manager **[The Register](https://daily.dev/sources/theregister)** · 3 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Ransomware gangs are increasingly targeting mid-level IT managers in their 40s rather than C-suite executives, according to new research. The piece highlights a shift in attacker targeting strategy, focusing on individuals with significant system access but potentially less security awareness training than top executives. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 1 discussion and 35 comments across hackernews (as of 2026-09-14). **TL;DR:** The discussion largely ignores the article's security findings, instead devolving into debates about generational labels and BMI. The few substantive comments raise concerns about surveillance capitalism enabling ransomware targeting and the ineffectiveness of security training. **Sentiment:** 10% positive · 40% mixed · 50% skeptical **The case for** - Commenters note that attackers do significant pre-work to map organizational structures, mirroring how enterprise salespeople identify decision-makers — illustrating a sophisticated, asymmetric threat. - One commenter highlights that data brokers and surveillance capitalism hand organized crime and geopolitical adversaries ready-made intelligence on employee networks at little cost. **The pushback** - Security awareness training is widely seen as performative — done for legal and insurance reasons rather than genuine protection. - Commenters point out that the most vulnerable employees may simply be those who have lost motivation to care, which training cannot fix. - The article's framing around generational labels is criticized as imprecise and largely meaningless, especially outside the Anglosphere. - Several commenters found the article unclear on whether IT managers are being attacked or merely contacted as the path of least resistance to payment. **By community** - hackernews (mixed): The thread is dominated by off-topic generational taxonomy debates, with only a handful of comments engaging the actual security angle — those that do raise pointed concerns about data brokers enabling attackers and the futility of compliance-driven training. **Hottest debate:** Whether generational labels like Gen X, Millennial, and 'Xennial' have any meaningful or precise boundaries at all. **Open questions** - Are IT managers being directly compromised/attacked, or are ransomware gangs simply contacting them as the fastest route to a ransom payment? - What can organizations actually do beyond checkbox security training to protect mid-level employees with high system access? - Does the surveillance capitalism / data broker ecosystem pose a quantifiable national security risk, and does it affect non-US companies equally? **Highlights** > > 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. And commercially-available data: enterprise salespeople, for example, can buy this intel from data brokers (directly, or with layered services catering to sales funnels specifically). It's another way that surveillance capitalism can be a national security threat against the US. You have countless US companies collectively mapping out people networks and assembling often intimate dossiers on individuals... and saving international organized crime and geopolitical adversaries a ton of work, which they might not have the resources to otherwise do. > — [neilv on hackernews · 2 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49235422) > Companies hope that training will protect them from cyber threats, while ignoring that their most vulnerable employees are the ones that lost the motivation to care about their job. > — [Lucasoato on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49235407) > Training is basically just for legal and insurance reasons... If not there would be no reason to do yearly training of the same bs courses. > — [calgoo on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49235503) > The article is unclear: Do they "attack" the GenX managers and encrypt their stuff, or do they simply contact GenX managers in order to get paid faster? In that case, the managers aren't "victims" and aren't "attacked", that would be the company.. > — [stephbook on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49235742) **Source threads** - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49234724) · 65 points · 35 comments ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Paying ransomware attackers is making companies more vulnerable](https://daily.dev/posts/paying-ransomware-attackers-is-making-companies-more-vulnerable-ec935wmil) · TechCentral · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [How CISOs Can Beat the Ransomware Blame Game](https://daily.dev/posts/how-cisos-can-beat-the-ransomware-blame-game-rzggohtfm) · Security Boulevard · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Europe Evolves Into Ransomware's Favorite Region](https://daily.dev/posts/europe-evolves-into-ransomware-s-favorite-region-vih8gpse9) · Dark Reading · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Turns out most cybercriminals are old enough to know better](https://daily.dev/posts/turns-out-most-cybercriminals-are-old-enough-to-know-better-6shs7iyg9) · The Register · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#security](https://daily.dev/tags/security), [#ransomware](https://daily.dev/tags/ransomware) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/ransomware-gangs-skip-the-ceo-head-straight-for-the-40-something-it-manager-iwngm3nal) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Ransomware gangs skip the CEO, head straight for the 40-something IT manager","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/ransomware-gangs-skip-the-ceo-head-straight-for-the-40-something-it-manager-iwngm3nal","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/ransomware-gangs-skip-the-ceo-head-straight-for-the-40-something-it-manager-iwngm3nal"},"datePublished":"2026-08-09T09:38:10.912Z","dateModified":"2026-09-14T09:19:27.366Z","description":"Ransomware gangs are increasingly targeting mid-level IT managers in their 40s rather than C-suite executives, according to new research. 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