Ransomware Victimology: Redefining the High-Risk User

Demographic analysis of cyberattack victims can often provide insight to attackers’ habits and intent. The insights in the Zscaler ThreatLabs 2026 Ransomware Report include a look at victims based on several factors: their role within a targeted organization, the business function they serve, and industry sector. While these findings should not suggest that defenders shift their attention away from a less-targeted demographic, the findings can be used to prioritize efforts and detections from those most likely to face the initial brunt of ransomware campaigns.

Zscaler’s David Moulton and Phil Hagen recently discussed this topic on an episode of SecOps Weekly.  Check out the recording for additional perspective.

Key Takeaways

Ransomware operators seem to be tuning their playbooks to provide the most damaging impact in the shortest amount of time. This has resulted in faster and more successful attacks, as seen with larger payouts for a smaller number of victims detailed in the 2026 Ransomware Report.

While victimology analysis helps provide some context for this trend, it certainly does not mean defenders should focus only on highly-positioned individuals, certain business functions, or limit ransomware preparedness and response planning to certain industries. Instead, these observations should inform defenders on how likely they are to be in the attackers’ sights as well as how to prioritize the detection of known ransomware precursors when observed in conjunction with a targeted role or function.

This holistic approach will allow defenders to keep in step with the advancement and change in ransomware operations as they continue to evolve in the future.

Technical Analysis

More Senior Roles are the Initial Victims of Ransomware Campaigns

More than half of initial victims in ransomware cases held a title of “Manager” or above. Whether this is the result of deliberate targeting or other factors is unknown. However, the outcome is clear: Attackers are gaining footholds via individual victims with both expansive access in most environments and precious trust with the organization’s personnel.

For most organizations, a suspicious request from an obviously bogus, externally-sourced email might finally be discounted after decades of user education. On the other hand, if the attacker sent such a lure from the manager’s actual email account, it would be difficult for the recipient to differentiate the malicious request from a legitimate one via the same manager. Clearly, co-opting an authority figure’s legitimate communications path provides unprecedented access, believability, and therefore successes.

Business Functions with Access to Valuable/Regulated Data are Targeted First

Attackers’ initial access to their targets is overwhelmingly through functions that focus on business operations. This directly translates to gaining access to business-critical information. Two thirds of initial attack vectors involved individual victims in the accounting/finance, sales, operations, and HR departments. This clearly shows attackers are either deliberately targeting or simply finding the most success with parts of the victims’ organizations that provide maximum value for ransom operations.

With the immediate access to this business-critical information, attackers increase the likelihood of access to vital information the victim would be more likely to pay to recover or prevent from public disclosure. Obviously data in this category would be more valuable to the victim and command higher recovery or “hush” payments.

Just Two Industries Represent Half of All Victims

Similar to the Business Function findings above, over half of all victims are concentrated among industries in the manufacturing and technology sectors. Whether this is the result of deliberate targeting of these sectors or other factors, the reality is that organizations who are more sensitive to service disruptions and/or have access to sensitive information represent the majority of victims in the sample.

Ransomware operators have demonstrated a clear operational tendency to maximize attack impact. A manufacturing environment that measures productivity in daily output and a technology firm whose valuation depends on proprietary intellectual property share the same vulnerability: both are strongly incentivized to pay rather than endure prolonged downtime or risk hostile disclosure.

Conclusion

As the ransomware operators change their approaches, so must the defenders. However, a good deal of foundational cybersecurity best practices will remain valuable means of mitigating the attackers’ success. Applying the concept of least-privilege will minimize the amount of data an individual victim can access, thereby limiting the amount of data an attacker can steal using their account. 

Solutions like Zscaler ZPA, or traditional microsegmentation, constrain lateral movement, preventing a single compromised identity or system from becoming a foothold across the environment. User education remains a vital component of any effective security program; as attacker tactics shift, so should the guidance users receive.

Defense operations can use this information to fine tune their own alerting logic as well. While ransomware precursors are generally known and therefore detectable, perhaps a higher priority should be placed on those detections when observed from accounts of senior personnel in the organization or members of a more heavily targeted business function.

Zscaler Coverage to aid in Mitigating Ransomware Attacks

• Zscaler ZTE eliminates traditional network architecture in favor of user-to-application and similar controls through a managed and monitored cloud pathway. ZTE’s AI threat detection helps identify malicious targeting early, giving defenders more time to mitigate threats before they become catastrophic.
• To monitor egress paths and block sensitive data from leaving enterprise systems, Zscaler DLP is uniquely positioned to provide security teams with the visibility needed to identify potential data loss quickly and early, before a ransomware campaign can steal enough data to be a credible risk.
• As attackers adopt AI technologies, so must security operations teams. Zscaler Agentic SecOps provides a decisive edge in this escalation, providing scalable and adaptive agents to help your human SOC team members keep pace with attackers.