When “Normal” Doesn’t Work: Rethinking Data and the Role of the SOC Analyst
Monzy Merza, Co-Founder and CEO of Crogl, joins Sean Martin and Marco Ciappelli to discuss how cybersecurity teams can finally move beyond the treadmill of normalization, alert fatigue, and brittle playbooks that keep analysts from doing what they signed up to do—find and stop bad actors.
Merza draws from his experience across research, security operations, and leadership roles at Splunk, Databricks, and one of the world’s largest banks. His message is clear: the industry’s long-standing approach of forcing all data into one format before analysis has reached its limit. Organizations are spending millions trying to normalize data that constantly changes, and analysts are paying the price—buried under alerts they can’t meaningfully investigate.
The conversation highlights the human side of this issue. Analysts often join the field to protect their organizations, but instead find themselves working on repetitive tickets with little context, limited feedback loops, and an impossible expectation to know everything—from email headers to endpoint logs. They are firefighters answering endless 911 calls, most of which turn out to be false alarms.
Crogl’s approach replaces that normalization-first mindset with an analyst-first model. By operating directly on data where it lives—without requiring migration or schema alignment—it allows every analyst to investigate deeper, faster, and more consistently. Each action taken by one team member becomes shared knowledge for the next, creating an adaptive, AI-driven system that evolves with the organization.
For CISOs, this means measurable consistency, auditability, and trust in outcomes. For analysts, it means rediscovering purpose—focusing on meaningful investigations instead of administrative noise.
The result is a more capable, connected SOC where AI augments human reasoning rather than replacing it. As Merza puts it, the new normal is no normalization—just real work, done better.
Watch the full interview and product demo: https://youtu.be/7C4zOvF9sdk
Learn more about CROGL: https://itspm.ag/crogl-103909
Note: This story contains promotional content. Learn more.
GUEST
Monzy Merza, Founder and CEO of CROGL | On LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/monzymerza/
RESOURCES
Learn more and catch more stories from CROGL: https://www.itspmagazine.com/directory/crogl
Brand Spotlight: The Schema Strikes Back: Killing the Normalization Tax on the SOC: https://brand-stories-podcast.simplecast.com/episodes/the-schema-strikes-back-killing-the-normalization-tax-on-the-soc-a-corgl-spotlight-brand-story-conversation-with-cory-wallace [Video: https://youtu.be/Kx2JEE_tYq0]
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