System management solutions are prime targets for attackers because they have a central position and the required access rights to all the systems to be managed.

If attackers manage to access system management solutions, (e.g. through unpatched security vulnerabilities), they can then control and reconfigure all the systems managed. They could thus access sensitive information or disrupt services or managed systems. For example, a company could centrally deploy configuration servers for a system management solution. An unpatched vulnerability is then exploited in order to modify the configuration files so that the managed systems install ransomware. As a result, all the systems managed by the system management solution are encrypted.