Monzy Merza, Co-founder & CEO at Crogl
4.1/5 Rating
AI
Not Publicly Disclosed/mo
Not Publicly Disclosed ARR

Monzy MerzaCo-founder & CEO

In this interview, Crogl co-founder and CEO Monzy Merza discusses the evolution of security operations and the launch of the company's free enterprise-grade AI SOC platform. Merza analyzes the core drivers of alert fatigue, including data fragmentation and practitioner competency barriers. He details Crogl's neurosymbolic architecture—integrating large language models, deterministic knowledge graphs, and secure harnesses—and highlights the strategic necessity of on-prem deployments in safeguarding critical global infrastructure.

Monzy Merza

Monzy Merza

Co-founder & CEO

Crogl

Crogl

Founder Stats

  • AI
  • Started 2023
  • Not Publicly Disclosed/mo
  • 6–20 team
  • Los Ranchos, New Mexico, United States

About Monzy Merza

Monzy Merza is the co-founder and CEO of Crogl, a cybersecurity company building autonomous AI knowledge engines for security operations centers. Prior to founding Crogl in 2023, he led security research and GTM strategies at major platforms including Splunk and Databricks. Merza has also served at HSBC and within the U.S. nuclear weapons complex, bringing decades of deep practitioner expertise to enterprise security automation.

Interview

July 20, 2026

Q

What is Crogl's core mission statement?

Question 1 of 18
Monzy Merza

Our mission is to make every security practitioner as effective as the entire team. This standard enables us to focus on solving the hardest problems in security operations.

0
Q

Crogl acts as an AI SOC agent that enables security teams to hunt threats and investigate alerts using all their existing data without having to move it.

Question 2 of 18
Monzy Merza

Crogl acts as an AI SOC agent that enables security teams to hunt threats and investigate alerts using all their existing data without having to move it.

0
Q

Why is data fragmentation a significant issue in security operations?

Question 3 of 18
Monzy Merza

Historically, vendors told customers to put all data in one place, but that is not the reality. Data lives in various data lakes, databases, and cloud providers, leading to fragmented, non-schematized information.

0
Q

How does Crogl handle normalized data across different data stores?

Question 4 of 18
Monzy Merza

Crogl allows analysts to conduct deep security investigations without forcing them to normalize or schematize data across all different tools or stores.

0
Q

How has the cybersecurity community's perception of AI evolved recently?

Question 5 of 18
Monzy Merza

We went from absolute distrust, to teams attempting to build their own systems, and finally to realizing that building enterprise-grade AI SOC agents requires a highly engineered solution.

0
Q

Why is a simple chatbot insufficient for enterprise security operations?

Question 6 of 18
Monzy Merza

A chatbot does not provide consistency, governance, auditability, or sustainability. True SOC operations require routing between multiple models, context, and consistency.

0
Q

What are the three primary drivers of alert fatigue?

Question 7 of 18
Monzy Merza

Alert fatigue is driven by tool and data fragmentation, expecting practitioners to hold a wide breath of domain and database competencies, and a growing enterprise footprint with evolving threats.

0
Q

Why is it unreasonable to expect analysts to have broad competencies?

Question 8 of 18
Monzy Merza

Security is the only industry where we expect one practitioner to be an expert in database queries, threat analysis, IT stacks, and regulatory compliance. It is an untenable width of expectations.

0
Q

How does Crogl's neurosymbolic agentic system architecture function?

Question 9 of 18
Monzy Merza

It is a three-part approach combining a reasoning system (the LLM), a rules-driven deterministic system (a knowledge graph for auditable consistency), and a harness (for integration, safety, and governance).

0
Q

Why did you decide to build Crogl as an on-premise technology?

Question 10 of 18
Monzy Merza

We serve critical environments like utility companies, banks, and government agencies. These environments have stringent security controls and cannot use typical cloud-based SaaS solutions.

0
Q

How can organizations balance automation with human oversight when deploying Crogl?

Question 11 of 18
Monzy Merza

We suggest starting interactively to build confidence, then deploying Crogl autonomously for a single use case, and gradually opening the aperture from one use case to another.

0
Q

Why is requiring constant human-in-the-loop oversight untenable for SOCs?

Question 12 of 18
Monzy Merza

The volume of alerts is too high for humans to inspect every single query. Teams must let the AI work and instead focus on building systems to govern that automated work.

0
Q

What are the three degrees of human decision-making in security automation?

Question 13 of 18
Monzy Merza

Humans can decide on query execution, ticket-level escalations, or act as the specification writer defining the AI's playbooks and success criteria. The third degree is the most superior.

0
Q

What motivated Crogl to release a free enterprise-grade AI SOC platform?

Question 14 of 18
Monzy Merza

Given the mixed messages in the industry around security AI, we decided to put the product in a private preview for the community to test and decide for themselves.

0
Q

How does the Slack community support users of your free platform?

Question 15 of 18
Monzy Merza

It allows users to share transparent, open feedback. Our engineering team, product teams, and I are directly active in the Slack channel to help users troubleshoot and build.

0
Q

For what specific types of environments is Crogl's platform designed?

Question 16 of 18
Monzy Merza

It is built for highly consequential environments—like nuclear plants, manufacturing sites, utility grids, and major banks—that need secure, robust, and air-gapped capabilities.

0
Q

How will artificial intelligence reshape security operations over the next year?

Question 17 of 18
Monzy Merza

We will see widespread adoption of AI technologies, a rise in AI-driven attacks like the Mexican government breach, and sophisticated cyber campaigns run for under eighty dollars in tokens.

0
Q

What is your single piece of advice for adopting AI in the SOC?

Question 18 of 18
Monzy Merza

Get your hands dirty and try it. Just like the security community did with Snort or Yara, download the tool, tinker with the capturing, and participate in the project.

0

Video Interviews with Monzy Merza

Can AI Really Solve Alert Fatigue? | Monzy, CEO & Co-Founder of Crogl

 Can AI Really Solve Alert Fatigue? | Monzy, CEO & Co-Founder of Crogl

Can AI Really Solve Alert Fatigue? | Monzy, CEO & Co-Founder of Crogl

How to Make One SOC Analyst Work Like Ten: Stop Normalizing Everything—Start Solving Something: DEMO

How to Make One SOC Analyst Work Like Ten: Stop Normalizing Everything—Start Solving Something: DEMO

Why Human Judgment Still Wins in the AI-Driven SOC with Monzy Merza, Crogl

Why Human Judgment Still Wins in the AI-Driven SOC with Monzy Merza, Crogl

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