Founder's Story
AI Is Both the Problem and the Solution—This Cyber CEO Explains Why | Ep. 224 with Scott Alldridge, President and CEO of IP Services
Tue, 27 May 2025
We sit down with Scott Alldridge, President and CEO of IP Services and author of the Amazon bestseller VisibleOps Cybersecurity, part of a series that has sold over 350,000 copies. With more than 20 years at the helm of a thriving tech business, Scott shares the critical lessons that have enabled his company to survive and evolve through seismic shifts in technology, from the early internet era to the age of AI.Scott discusses the importance of reinvention, the growing urgency of cybersecurity, and the dual threat/opportunity posed by artificial intelligence. He explains how AI is changing the cybersecurity landscape and why every company, regardless of size, must assume a breach as a foundational mindset. Scott also reveals the thinking behind his bestselling book series and how aligning a book with your business model can become a powerful driver of credibility and growth.We cover:What it takes to stay in business for over 20 yearsWhy reinvention is critical in techHow AI is both the solution and the problem in cybersecurityThe surprising rise of ransomware-as-a-serviceThe book strategy that helped him sell 350,000+ copiesPractical tips every business should implement today to avoid being hackedIf you're a founder, tech leader, or entrepreneur who cares about protecting your company and staying ahead of the curve, this is a must-listen.Resources:Get the book: VisibleOps Cybersecurity on AmazonConnect with Scott: scottalldridge.comCompany site: ipservices.comOur Sponsors:* Check out Northwest Registered Agent and use my code FOUNDERS for a great deal: https://northwestregisteredagent.com* Check out Plus500: https://plus500.com* Check out Rosetta Stone and use my code TODAY for a great deal: https://www.rosettastone.com
Chapter 1: How did Scott Alldridge manage to stay in business for over 20 years?
So Scott, something that I've noticed that is a very, very hard thing to get in business is to be in business for over 20 years. I was reading some stats that most companies fail within two years, five years, and it's like 90 something percent of companies do not exist after 10 years. What has been something that you've done that's been enabling you to be able to be in business over 20 years?
Chapter 2: What are the key challenges in reinventing a tech business?
Yeah, well, thanks for having me, Daniel. And yeah, being in business for 20 years, it's actually been a little longer than that. I was actually kind of a teen entrepreneur when I started 19, my first business. But the big key there is basically being able to reinvent yourself. And I think that's one of the challenges that's really hard to do.
Sometimes we get into norms and we get very hyper-focused and myopic and we really aren't looking at what is the next potential shift in how we deliver service or what services we are delivering. And of course, in technology, it's an ever-changing world out there. So we are constantly evolving and figuring out how to deliver the next generation of services. So that's been a big, big challenge.
part of the, I say, success quotient, if you will, for establishing and longevity of 20 years of business plus.
Chapter 3: How does technology evolution impact business operations?
I imagine if you're in a technology-focused business and technology is advancing at a rate that's, I don't know if we can even keep up mentally right now. It's so fast. How do you stay at the front and at the forefront? I mean, you went through the dot-com era all the way to now.
Yeah, the internet was just becoming a thing when we first launched into some software, software retail stores, that kind of thing way back in the day. But the idea there staying up on stuff is, first off, when you've kind of lived in this space and it really is your career and it's what you do, it is a little easier to, you know, assimilate new information, be able to take it in, understand it.
We live in a world of acronyms like a lot of industries, right? So it's not quite as difficult to stay up on stuff if you're living it every day for years and years. However, with that said, yeah, constant research, constant looking for kind of, you know, working with organizations that do research that we partnered with. I have a little sister division that's called the IT Process Institute.
So we do some research and development, really research benchmarking and prescriptive guidance, which is a little bit where the books and the thought leadership comes from. So that helps us stay at the forefront, kind of at the tip, if you will, of what is the latest technology landscape, digital transformation, how are you ready for it?
Chapter 4: What is the relationship between AI and cybersecurity?
And of course, in today's world, it's all about cybersecurity and artificial intelligence.
So how are you seeing the coming together now more mainstream? Because I'm sure it's been that way for a while, but it's becoming more and more mainstream and now you have Gen AI and stuff. And I'm sure there's so many cybersecurity threats that are happening. How are you looking at AI now cybersecurity, those two things morphing and merging as what could be a challenge or what could be a benefit?
Yeah. So not to oversimplify it, but it's a little bit back to the antivirus days where we get an antivirus piece of software to keep malware off our machines. And it would do a really good job, whatever flavor you use. There were lots of them out there. Semantic, you know, antivirus, et cetera.
And then, of course, they have an update you need to do because they figured out, you know, how to inject new malware that would go around the anti-malware. And so it became a cat and mouse game. And, you know, that's a little bit where we're at modern day with, you know, cybersecurity and particularly, you know, AI. AI can be used both for the good and the bad.
Chapter 5: How can businesses protect themselves from cybersecurity threats?
So the bad actors and the threat actors are using AI in ways they never have before. They're getting really smart. They're able to launch multi-tiers and points of attack that they weren't capable of doing in the past. And that is definitely creating challenges in cybersecurity and SYNAP. However...
We also have the deployment of the proactive AI that's actually looking and defending at a much faster, higher rate. So we're kind of back a little bit to the cat and mouse game, chasing each other as to which one's doing what.
But at the end of the day, good cybersecurity really is not necessarily about the next shiny toy or the next cool tool or even AI per se, even though we're having to get better about AI itself, because even employing AI for other purposes in your organization can actually open up cybersecurity threats you may not have even thought about.
So that's really kind of the tip right now of cybersecurity is really how do we know that the AI that we're introducing into our organizations is secure because everybody's trying to use it to be more efficient.
So long answer, but the short form is, yeah, I think we have to utilize the latest technologies to keep up with the bad actors, but also understand that there are foundational layers of security. There's no point-based one thing you can do. It's always layers. We use a methodology called zero trust, and there's multiple layers as how we deploy zero trust to protect organizations.
I think it's good to have a business that...
is always changing i think that you know if i look at what companies have survived over long periods of time there's a lot of companies that have been dying the last few years and they're not really companies that had changed or they didn't adapt they just kind of continued but we're seeing you know tech companies and companies that are that are adapting very quickly are the ones that are continuing to survive like you over 20 years in business
So you're in business over 20 years and you're in cybersecurity. And for some reason, you're like, I'm going to write this book. What made you inspired to even write a book and how that was going to play into entrepreneurship or building your personal brand or whatever you hope to achieve from that book?
Yeah, great question. The reality is, is that as I referred to earlier, we really had spun back in the mid 2000s, kind of the IT Process Institute to really research and benchmark and deliver prescriptive guidance. There's kind of a lack of that. It's matured over the years to some degree, but there's still in IT, it's kind of like Mike does it one way, Sarah does it another way.
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Chapter 6: What inspired Scott to write 'VisibleOps Cybersecurity'?
But What has been helping you in terms of getting your book out there and getting it heard?
Yeah, there's an, you know, the IT Process Institute and the series of books, The Visible Officers, really is somewhat of an altruistic goal. Raise the tide that floats the boats in terms of IT management, best practices, cybersecurity. We want to help everybody do better. And so if they can glean something in the book. So first off, there's altruistic goal, right? Just we really want to help.
businesses across the U S and the globe really increase enhanced against the bad guys. Um, that's the first goal. The second part of the book and what's kind of helped it is that it really is part and parcel to the types of services that we deliver. We kind of are the living, breathing visible ops organization. Um, That's kind of how we deliver our practice and our service around cybersecurity.
Chapter 7: What are the foundational controls for effective IT management?
So it is it is it helps my organization both internally. My people read and learn from it. We train in it. We actually have some online certification training for visible ops. You can actually have access to. So there's a lot of things that are around the book that kind of feed off of kind of the ecosystem.
But also we early on had partnered with several vendors, larger vendors, HP, Red Hat, some of those types of vendors to help us promote the books. And so they actually would buy thousands of copies of them and help promote them through conferences and through different activities that they were doing to promote their businesses.
Because a lot of the principle concepts and the principles of the book are really based very simpatico, if you will. They complement the types of software and services around security, really gives the research and the backdrop to promote the type of services that those vendors actually provide. So the vendor relationships also help really promote the book as well, besides
being a part of our business. And of course, things at some point take on a little bit of a, if you will, viral. And so my book just became an Amazon bestseller. It's starting to get a little viral now. So we're seeing that activity kick up like we've seen with the other books and hopefully start to really take off over the next few months.
Chapter 8: How can change management prevent security breaches?
This is a very unique perspective on a book. Because many people, they write a book and they hope it builds their personal brand because maybe they want to speak. But the fact that you're taking the book and then leveraging that within the organization and then also connecting that to other corporations, that's a very unique spin.
When you think about cybersecurity, what right now do you feel are the biggest threats that businesses need to know about?
So a couple of things there. I could talk on and on about this one. But the first thing I would say is that no business is too small. The last couple of years, they're going crazy downstream to small organizations. you know, companies that maybe only do 500,000 worth of sales, believe it or not. So a lot of the belief out there is, well, we're just not a target. We're too small.
They wouldn't want, they're not interested in us, but they are. And they'll take five grand, 10 grand. The other thing is that they're highly sophisticated, not only using AI, but ransomware franchises is a real thing. You can actually sign up for a franchise. They give you a tool set.
If you're a smart high schooler with computers, you try to hack in, you get maybe a little bit into their network and, You can then partner with the franchise. They'll come in and then they split the proceeds on the ransomware. It's that sophisticated. Then when you go to pay, they don't just have you pay some way.
They actually send you their call center and their call center will take your payment. They want to convert typically crypto currencies into dollars because they don't want to be traced. So this is the world we live in. The threats are everywhere and they're going way downstream.
One of the first principles we talk about with all companies that we work with is assume breach, because if the bad guys really do want to get in, they generally will find a way to get in about 99 percent chance. That's why we see some of the big, big corporations that have every tool deployed and all the experts in the world. And yet they're still getting hacked for millions of dollars.
So the point is we start with assume breach, which means you have to have backup and restore and what we call a mutability where your backups are not even connected to your network. They're privately, securely encrypted and stored so that when the bad guys get in, what they typically will do is not only encrypt your current systems, but they'll find where your backups are.
They'll encrypt those and then people can't restore and then you're stuck and you have to pay. So the first principle, and I'll just give the one, is working on true business continuity, business disaster recovery, business backup and restore with immutability, air-gapped backups. That's a really important principle. But there's a couple of things right there. No business is too small.
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