Founder's Story - Why 33 Million Small Businesses Are Easy Targets for Hackers | Ep 268 with Ken Boyce Founder of CyberGlobal USA

Episode Date: October 13, 2025

In this episode of Founder’s Story, Ken Boyce to discussed why CyberGlobal USA is tackling one of the fastest-growing threats of our time—cybersecurity for small businesses. With the global cybersecurity market projected to hit $500 billion by 2030, Ken explains how his company is bringing enterprise-level protection to the 33 million small businesses that remain largely unprotected. Key Discussion Points:Ken reveals how AI has transformed cybercrime from a “fishing pole” to a “fishing net” game, making it possible for hackers to cheaply target even the smallest companies. He compares the fight against cybercrime to cops and robbers—hackers trying to break in, cybersecurity firms racing to block them. He also explains why most small businesses can’t afford the same protections as Fortune 500 firms, and how CyberGlobal’s franchise model changes the game by making cybersecurity scalable and affordable. Takeaways:Listeners will learn why 60% of small businesses shut down after a major cyberattack, why prevention is far cheaper than reacting after the fact, and how AI is both the biggest weapon for hackers and the strongest defense for security firms. Ken also shares his vision for franchising as a distribution model, creating “trust networks” across the U.S. that put cybersecurity within reach for millions of vulnerable companies. Closing Thoughts:Cybersecurity isn’t just about Fortune 500 firms anymore—it’s about protecting the backbone of the economy: small businesses. Ken Boyce’s mission at CyberGlobal USA is clear—helping entrepreneurs survive in an era where AI-driven hackers never sleep. Learn more at www.cybergl.com Get more leads and grow your business. Go to https://www.pipedrive.com/founders and get started with a 30 day free trial. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Today's episode is sponsored by Pipe Drive, the number one CRM tool for small to medium businesses. I am excited to share more about them later in the episode. These are criminals. These are bad, bad people. That cybersecurity is going to hit a $500 billion industry by 2030, which is insane. If you go back 10 years ago, cyber criminals were only hitting big companies because it costs them a lot of money to hit these companies. You know, they get paid a million, two million, you hear them. $5 million ransomware and all that.

60% of businesses lose their business after major cyber tech. So they would never target small, million-sized businesses because it wasn't cost effective. The thing that's changed the game completely is AI. Once you start looking at it, you're like, wow, the world is collapsing. They have a business, they have expenses, they have everything that we have in every legitimate business. They have the same cause. I hate to say it to you, but cyber criminals are business people. And if you want to get your company back, you better pay it.

So Ken, I got to say, cybersecurity is something I am very interested. And I find myself going down the rabbit hole, by the way, with AI and everything happening. I'm like, right. Like once you start looking at it, you're like, wow. the world is collapsing that's how I feel I feel like if I was in your shoes and I was hearing and seeing what was going on it's like ignorance is bliss for me I almost would rather not know but I'm sure we have to talk about it today um so I would have first start with something that you've told me was that cybersecurity is going to hit a 500 billion dollar industry by 2030 which is insane

however over 33 million small businesses are completely unprotected yeah daniel it is it is kind of scary to be honest but you know you don't want to grow around being fearful all your life and you know you get car insurance you hope you don't get in a car wreck right so that's why you have it and you know i think cybersecurity is is definitely a big transition happening especially in the last three to four years is if you go back 10 years ago, you know, cyber criminals were only hitting big companies because it costs them a lot of money and to hit these companies and they've get big big payouts, you know, they get paid a million, two million, you hear them, $5 million ransomware and all that. So they would never target small and medium sized businesses

because it wasn't cost effective. I hate to say it to you, but cyber criminals are business people. They have a business, they have expenses, they have everything that we have in every legitimate business. They have the same cause. The thing that's changed the game completely is AI. And AI, they're using tools now that I like to compare to fishing with a single pole. Everybody goes fishing out dairy, you know, cast your trying to catch one fish at a time. That's what they were doing before. And big fish, they're, they're fishing for the whales. Not anymore. What they're doing with AI now, they can, use nets. They can cast out where their cost go way down, way, way down to go out and start

to target small. When I say small, a company with 5, 10 employees, that's maybe really small, but to over 20 employees, a company that does two, three, four million dollars on the low end and everything up, you know, they can hit up these companies now and shut down their assembly line or hold their data or blackmail them. Literally, it's what it is. It's blackmail. Or they call ransomware, you know, blackmail, you want to call it that. But, you know, they might hit them up for $25, $30, $40,000, $50,000, you know. And if you want to get your company back and, you know, you better pay it. So that never happened before.

And now with AI, the advent of AI, which can be used, we use it for a positive. We use it to be far more cost effective. We use it to be a lot more efficient when it comes to the services we have. But unfortunately, the cybercriminals are using it for the bad side of it. And it's just a fact of light. So you can put your head in the sand and ignore it like you just said. Maybe I don't get hit. Okay.

Well, I like to compare it to real life. Everybody else can understand is, well, maybe you don't get in a car accident. Good chance you might not. But when you do, you're going to lose a lot of money. And, you know, 60% of businesses lose their business after a cyber tech. attack, small businesses. It's numbers I don't make up. 60% of businesses lose their business after major cyber attack. It's just the fact of what's going on. I've spoken to hundreds of entrepreneurs and one of the biggest pain points they share is generating consistent quality

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You, yeah, I want to dig in more to that. Sure. It actually happened to me before where my landlord for my commercial rent was hacked. And we were, and his email was hacked and told us to send money to his new account. So money was sent for a year before he realized that he was. And now he couldn't get the money back from however many people that, you know, that was doing the same thing. And like you said, that was something very small. But if 60% of people, 60% of small businesses, they won't survive in the end if they have a cybersecurity attack, why are they left so vulnerable?

And who's to blame for that? Well, I think it's a, things that move so rapidly is that cyber security expenses in the past have been, or offering services have been very expensive. So that's why, you know, a lot of our competitors, a lot of other cybersecurity companies, you know, they focus on the Fortune 1,000 by Fortune 500, whatever, the big companies, right? Because they have bigger budgets. They can afford these type of services and all that. And, you know, small businesses can't afford those type of services. You have to be far more efficient. You have to be, as I like to say, you have to be a little bit protective, okay?

You don't just have a house and you don't have a lock on it. Some people have a full 24-7 monitoring of their house and security systems and cameras and are everywhere. Like, yeah, at least have a lock on your door, okay, at the minimum. So it's all in between. So it's a matter of being able to have a budget so that these small and medium-sized businesses can be able to afford these type of services. We are in the position to be able to do that.

We've worked with in the enterprise world for the last eight years. You know, it's very competitive, very high, really competitive. Big numbers, big deals, okay, when it comes to our business, but that's, no, I'd rather deal with 33 million companies, as you said, and I'd rather be a whale swimming in an ocean where there's salmon and trout than trying to beat up against whales anymore. So that's where the market has really gone for us. We've identified that. We've focused it.

That's why we're franchising and developing a partnership model, because we know that small and medium-sized businesses are getting hit every day with us. And, you know, it's where the market's going. And, but the nice part is with AI is we're using it for a positive. We've developed our own internal AI engine that helps us do things far more efficiently so we can pass on more cost companies. So it's not about money. You know, we have a mission of protecting companies.

These are criminals. These are, you know, these are bad, bad people, you know, and the more we can help companies to protect against them, the better. You know, this reminds me of back in, like, the 90s when I was really big into computer programming it was like they were taking hackers to hack against hackers I don't know if you remember that but that was like the big thing like even the movie hackers it was like yeah I forget they have a word for it now it's like ethical hacking or something like that um that's exactly what it is we do we do ethical hacking

we ethical hacking is asking the permission of the company to be hacked So we are hackers, but we don't do it from a nefarious standpoint. We do it from the ethical standpoint. That's exactly right. Makes sense. You can find vulnerabilities. You need to see where the vulnerabilities lie in where. So that's the fascinating thing about AI now.

I almost feel like AI has become that. Like you're saying, AI can be used to hack, but it can also be used to fight against hack. Do you see something in the future where there's like agentic AI or AI agents? almost like battling against each other. And I mean, with the rapid speed of AI, how do you even keep up with, because I imagine these people are spending all of their time and focus on how they can make things better for their end.

So how do you also stay up to speed to fight against that? No, experience, experience, experience, period, is understanding how they're thinking, what they're doing and counteract it. very simple is we keep ahead of that curve is we have the engineers and the technicians internally that are learning oh did you hear about this cyber person doing this attack now and here's how they did it and here's how they got in and here okay now we know we can prevent it right so it's all about that experience knowledge and expertise with a cybersecurity company that you got to make sure that they

understand how things change on a daily basis you know not to be an over dramatic maybe in a weekly in our monthly basis, but our, definitely our business accelerates faster. I don't know if I jump on all the hype of AI is going to take over all the jobs. And, you know, if you type in actually, what's funny, you type in AI, will, will AI eliminate cybersecurity services? And AI spits back to you, chat GP. No, not at all. In fact, cybersecurity services are going to continue to increase.

And what do they say? What does AI say? this is funny. This is AI commenting on itself, is that cyber criminals doing to use AI to be far smarter and far more efficient. But what AI does say is that cyber cybersecurity companies that don't use AI and keep with a manual standpoint are going to lose efficiencies and become less competitive. So for us to stay ahead of our competition is that we invest much more into. We have our own, I might have said it before, but we have our own engine. We don't use chat GPT or Gronk or any of these generic ones. We've created our own based on the knowledge we've learned

from those cyber attacks to be able to program it to basically go out and analyze companies to be able to do it. That's a big difference from our company compared to say some other cybersecurity companies too. So let's walk through if something happens to one of these small businesses so right something happens i don't know what data breach whatever it is and this person this hacker or whatever you want to call them they say you have to give us one bitcoin otherwise we're going to do something really bad then what uh unfortunately if you're doing what's called incident response now by the way let me back up daniel i am not a techie okay i've been in franchising and business development for 30 years so when it comes

the technical questions, so there's technical people out there, I'm going to make a best of it, okay? That's why we have our technical staff. But at the end of the day, is really what you're talking about is an incident response is after the fact. After the fact is very bad because now it's damage control. Is okay, what are they, what are they stealing? Are they shutting down a line? Are they possibly stealing data holding us at ransom because they're going to expose everybody. What's the damage to the company? So that's an initial response. What's damages to us? How can we, you know, do we pay this ransomware? From our experience, cybercriminos already know that formula. They're not going to come in and you're a company that has $50,000 in the

bank and ask you for a million because they know the answer is going to be, sorry, dude, do what you want. I don't have it, right? That kind of thing. So it's all about that valuation period in coming in and doing that. But, you know, if you're, if you're responding to a cyber attack after the fact, I can guarantee you one thing. It's not going to be good. You're on mute there, Daniel. Sorry. Yeah, no worries. So it sounds like this is more of a proactive approach because the reactive approach is very, very hard, which it makes a lot of sense. Because you're kind of at whim of what this person, company, people want to do in the end. So what can these small businesses do? Because I don't think they fully understand what they're even supposed to be doing, what they can be

doing to be proactive. Well, the first thing we do with a company is we give them what we call kind of a cybersecurity health checkup. And that's just an evaluation of, you know, compared to a house so people can relate, is it come in here and you go, you know, your windows, all the locks are broken on your windows. And hey, by the way, your back patio deck sliders, it's not working properly. You can jack that open easy, you know, and then say, here's all the vulnerabilities that you have in your house. Well, you need to fix them, right? Now, we identify that. Then we can help fix them. But then let's put a system in around that that prevents people from coming in every other endpoint or entry point. We call it, you know, at your house it's your entry point.

We call it in the business the endpoint is where they're coming in, right? So how do we prevent them? Now, you cannot 100% prevent hackers from hacking in. There's no foolproof system. It's just like any other bank or there's no full proof system to anything. What you want to do is you want to stop them quick enough to prevent the damage, you know, the least amount of damage as possible. So, you know, there's a thing called Security Operations Center, which 24-7 monitoring, which is just like a house. It's like an alarm system for your house is when somebody breaks in, where are they? How do we catch them? And who do we alert? Is it a high priority that, you know, you alert the CISO of a company? Or is it a real low priority is just, hey, you want to check this in

the morning, clean it up, right? That type of thing. So there's different levels and all that. That's where, you know, cyber security, to me, is really simple. It's a game of cops and robbers. And they're trying to break in and steal our stuff. And we're trying to prevent them from stealing your stuff. So it's just technology. Unfortunately, people can do it from anywhere on the planet and they can be in your backyard tomorrow in your company, it doesn't matter where it is. And as long as they can get in, but like I said, if you've got the right security in front of you, then you know, you're going to be at least, you know, you don't want to be waking up and losing your business tomorrow because you didn't spend, you know, X amount to

protect it. If that makes sense. Yeah. I was talking to a friend who's an accountant for a corporate accountant for a large company and they had to go through a training around that the CFO of the company will never call you to ask you to transfer, do any. when it comes to money because people they had already gotten a deep fake a hacker that deep fake the CFO's voice and contacted and and they almost I guess sent money to somebody so it's crazy like how technology. Daniel yes we've had the same thing happen to us is hackers they want to they want a they want to hack a cybersecurity firm isn't that sexy we hacked into cyber global. No, you didn't. We caught you. But what put on your point is, let's say you're

BMW, okay, big company, but let's say all these small companies sell all these parts of BMW, right? And then suddenly, you know, B&W gets an email from your company and you're a $5 million company, you're selling parts to them. But they get an email thinking it's you and it says, hey, by the way, just want to update our accounting information. We've changed bank accounts. This is our new bank account. So when you make your payment this month, make it to this account. And then two, three months later, you call BMW and go, like, what's going on? You haven't paid us in 90 days? And they go, oh, yes, we have. That's gone. Goodbye. That money's gone. You're not going to see it. Because they packed in, accessed the account, to their account,

which is definitely offshore somewhere where you're never going to find it. This happens every day. Now, do companies want to talk about that in the public? What do you think? Just silent crime. They don't want to talk about it because it hurts a reputation. Nobody wants to talk about that, right? But anyway, we deal with this all day long.

That's why I'm in the business. I'm a 30-year franchise guy. You told me a year ago I'd be in the cybersecurity industry. I would have lost a bet to you. I can guarantee you that I never thought of be here. It's just the opportunity that exists here for us and be able to grow those companies phenomenal. I could say, and we don't want to benefit

on other people's misery, but it's just reality. I think it's a great mission, right? Like you're saying, people are going to do bad things no matter what. They're going to do bad things. So the best thing you can do, though, is try to fight those people doing bad things to at least give these companies a chance

because you said it before most people are only focused on helping those large corporations they're not focused on helping the ones that are getting destroyed when it happens like you're saying these larger corporations yes i'm sure it impacts them negatively but it doesn't normally destroy their company this can literally destroy the majority of these companies will get destroyed overnight so why you know like you said you've been in the franchising industry for a long time. Now you're doing this. Where do you see the most passionate individuals getting involved or the most passionate people about this that are going to say, you know what, I think this is a great franchise to be a part of? I like to quote our business model to state firm insurance, if that makes

any sense, is when you have a state farm insurance agent, you know, their daily role is to find clients and get clients and serve as clients, right? Get clients, service clients. State Farm does everything else, right? That's the same with us, is we do all the cybersecurity work. We do all the meeting with clients with our franchisees. Our franchisees are people, people. Are there people that, you know, might have a sales and marketing background,

preferably. You don't have to, but you're a people person. You like exchanging, getting in front of people, talking with people doing this. identifying those needs, you know, that's why I get into this business because you didn't have to have, one is, we don't have time today to talk about my, this is my unicorn business, but, you know, low investment, no real estate, no build out, no employees, unless you want to hire salesperson, no trucks, you know, when you go down and look at a business, it's very, very appealing to want

to be part of if you have a home office yet, you know, you can't have an office, too, don't get me wrong, some of our franchisees do with salespeople and all that. But it's a service-based business. So it's easier to enter if you're a potential candidate to be a franchisee. People think, oh, do I need to know cybersecurity? I'm like, no. In fact, no offense to the people that are really technical and all that. But a lot of those people don't like to do sales, don't like to be in front of the customer,

don't like to do that on a daily basis, right? Well, this is the worst opportunity for them. And they might be the best cybersecurity technician in the world. Okay, we'll apply for a job. Maybe we'll hire you, right? But to be a franchise owner, probably not a good fit. So that's why I get involved with this, because I've always been about building an infrastructure and build a network and build basically infrastructure of going to get new clients.

Okay. And that's what we're doing is we're building through partnerships. We're building through our franchises. Yes, we'll reach out directly to clients. but we're building an infrastructure where, you know, we have companies that partner with us just like accountants and refer clients to us. And so we have a trust level because, you know, Dana, I know we jump around a little bit here, but one of the biggest things of a cyber series is trust. It's like, who do you trust this company? This is your company, right?

This looks almost like one of your daughters or your sons or your wife. It's that much, right? is who do you trust with them and all that? So that's a big part of where we go. And when you work with partnerships, you work with people that give you referrals and trust you. So you work with them and then they refer you to people. Instead of us going around and try to knock, I use that analogy before with fishing with a single hook.

That's the thing I've learned. My business career in 30 years, that's the biggest thing I've ever learned is I'd rather fish with a net than a hook, right? is that I can just get in front of more people and be able to develop things like that, right? So that's the way we're building our business is through partnerships, through a network, through franchises.

It's no better than having somebody in Boston, let's say, in Atlanta, in Houston, who are franchisees. We have 14 across the country now. But no better to have somebody there that has invested their own money, their own time. They're in. Like I say, they're in. They're not looking over their shoulder

every two weeks for a new job and they're going to jump ship and go to another company, right? Is their vested interest there? And that's why the franchise model and why it stuck with it for 30 years works so well in building that distribution channel. So we'll have 50 franchisees across the country. We'll have all kinds of partnerships. We'll have distribution channel so that we can go and reach that in customer with a lot less acquisition cost and a whole lot more efficiency and more than trust in building.

Well, Ken, I think not only about this topic here, but I think I also learned about just leveraging franchising in a different way, because I don't think a lot of people talk about, oh, I'm going to create a, yeah, I want to be a franchisor. I'm going to create, I'm going to franchise my business, and this is how it's going to be. I used to work in this area for a few years as a consultant, so I've seen different models, but I like this model, not just from your model, like as CyberGlobal, but if somebody wants to also franchise their business, it makes a lot of sense as a way to really create this network effect

without, obviously, we know most, some of the highest costs come from customer acquisition, but you really get, it's almost like having hyper-focused ambassadors of your brand, of your product, but they're winning. like they're winning as well well I give you like I have some fun with you right now is I think that I'm on teams and I have a Mac and I think that Mac and teams had fun with each other the engineers because you saw probably a couple thumbs up go up in our presentation today or in our podcast I ain't hitting thumbs up I don't know why they go up but anyway I saw it a couple of times and I saw you look and go thumbs up I go I didn't do it on purpose but just to give you a thumbs up

on what you're talking about, 100%. I saw that too. I was trying to figure out that it's something new on my end. Technology, like you said, it really moves every two seconds there's something new. But Ken, this has been great. If people want to get in touch with you, they want to find out more about Cyberglobal. They want

to follow along. How can they do so? Yeah, we'll go to our website, cyberg.l.com. My website or my email is can.com at CyberGL.com. Just Google us. You'll see it there.

Reach out to us if you want to, we have the WeFunder campaign that actually launched today, October 6, where people can invest in our company now. Two is we're still expanding across the country. We have 14 franchisees now. We still have 36 franchisees to go,

if you want to call it, before we have the whole country covered, which we hope to have that done by the end of the year. So lots of opportunities. We'd like to deal with people that want to jump into something that is, you know, could be new. There, you know, this is, this is a new, not a new industry. It's been around for a long time.

It's just transitioning very rapidly. It's transitioning with, there is lots of opportunity that's available out there. And, you know, we're going this way instead of where there's a lot of industries, unfortunately, that are going the other way. Well, it's a potential $500 billion industry by 2030, which is actually coming up. It's only about four years away. Sadly, this year is almost over. But Ken, this has been great. A lot of stuff happening at CyberGlobal.

And thank you for sharing all your insights today. I learned a lot. And I appreciate it. I always like to talk to great people where I can learn and I can take away something from the conversation. But thank you for joining us on Founder's Story. Thank you, Daniel.

And just a last thought is, we're on a mission to protect small and medium-sized businesses. That's why we get up every day, and that's what our mission is, is to make sure they're safe from these cybercriminals.