How Command Zero is redefining incident response in the age of autonomous cyber defense

For over two decades, cybersecurity expert Alfred Huger watched companies encounter the same issues, time and time again.

Despite technological advancements in detection and triaging, there were persistent bottlenecks in cyber investigations — the tough, complex cases that land on the desks of tier two and tier three analysts — which remained largely manual, inconsistent, and limited by human bandwidth.

“The problems that I saw taking place,” he says, “were the same ones I saw 25 years ago when I started, and that needle hadn’t moved.”

As CPO of the cyber investigations platform Command Zero, Huger is trying to solve the last mile of security operations. Not the easy alerts anyone can handle, but the complex, escalated cases that can break a business: “What mattered were those ones that escaped. Those are the ones that are going to put you on the front page of The New York Times, not the ones you knocked down.”

“Assume that you’re going to lose and be prepared to be able to find out how you come back from it.”

Clarifying complex cyber issues

Command Zero is the brainchild of Huger and cofounders Dov Yoran, who serves as CEO, and Dean De Beer, who is CTO. The trio previously worked together at cybersecurity giants, including Cisco, ThreatGrid, and Symantec, and have led seven successful cybersecurity acquisitions between them.

Having served thousands of customers and built up decades of experience, they spotted an opportunity to simplify cyber investigations.

“We wanted to take a shot at it because we felt if we changed it, we [could] truly leave our mark in an industry that is extremely important,” recalls Huger.

The trio founded Command Zero in 2021, intending to remove the grunt work from cyber investigations by automating complex processes.

“We focus on building a platform that lets tier two cyber investigators get to clarity quickly on complex issues,” Huger explains. “Our focus is on taking these Byzantine cases that couldn’t be solved and letting someone unravel them, independent of their skillset, to help people level up.”

Discovery, development, and decision making

Command Zero spent two and a half years in discovery, development, and testing mode, raising $14.3M in funding in 2022. The startup emerged from stealth in July 2024, having raised a $21M seed round with participation from Insight Partners and more than 60 cyber industry leaders.

“When we spoke to [Insight] about the technology we were building, it wasn’t an educational process,” Huger says of the partnership. “It was critical feedback.”

“We were able to get an idea put through an operator who lived it, and it allowed us to shortcut having to educate other investors. So it was an excellent partnership.”

The team had built a platform that uses AI to pull together fragmented data and generate timelines and reports — untangling complicated cyberattacks so human investigators can focus on making the right calls with clear, reliable information.

“For a long time in this space, people assumed that there was no way to handle this without it being entirely a person-driven event,” explains Huger. “I think we’ve proven at this stage that you can marry up autonomous decision making and user-led investigations to [achieve] outcomes that you couldn’t get to before.”

Marrying automation with human judgment

Command Zero is not about handing the wheel to AI. “Most of our users, they need to be in that mix to apply their judgment. We have users who never leverage the AI at all. And then you get those that can choose to use some of it or all of it. It’s almost like a slider that we allow you to apply.”

This hybrid approach gives investigators the choice, empowering juniors to “level up” while keeping veterans’ hard-won expertise in play. “We don’t want to assume that a large language model is more intelligent than they are,” says Huger, “because it isn’t.”

Where AI comes in handy is encoding decades of expert investigative knowledge into workflows and auditable reports, drastically reducing average time-to-understand — in some cases by as much as 70%.

AI is also an equalizer in an asymmetric fight, says Huger. If the stakes weren’t high enough, attackers now marshal LLMs as agents and security teams are faced with hugely scalable adversaries with no need for rest or resources.

“The nature of the people that we’re facing off with is changing, because they won’t always be people,” he points out.

Huger warns: “Unless people get in front of this really quickly by adopting technology that can do things with large language models and AI at speed, they’re going to [face] asymmetric disadvantages.”

“An attacker only has to get it right once. A defender has to get it right every time.”

In a sector plagued by talent shortages, harnessing AI is particularly important for plugging the gaps, adds Huger. “[AI] democratizes access to knowledge instantly. So you can be an expert in your one thing, but you’ll also be an expert in everything else.”

He pushes back against the cybersecurity “myth” of a fully automated Security Operations Center (SOC), for instance — “I think we’re a long way away from that at this stage.”

Instead, he argues, AI should free humans to focus on what matters: “Give those people the time to apply to the problems that are most serious. Let the systems deal with those that are lower down.”

Built for the next generation of AI threats

In July 2025, the company announced a $10M “strategic investment” and that it had achieved SOC 2 Type 2 compliance, following a comprehensive audit.

Building Command Zero has by no means been an easy ride, admits Huger. “Every day at a startup is an emotional roller coaster. The biggest thing I’ve learned at this startup or any other that I’ve been at, is that everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.”

His advice is to celebrate the wins and stick it out through the difficult times. “It takes a lot of fortitude to be able to get through this.”

The Command Zero team has its own definition of “wins,” adds Huger. “Myself and my other two cofounders have never believed in chasing a dollar. We’re not looking to build a company that we can sell … What we’re looking to do is build the best possible product we can that people love.”

As for what’s next, Huger is clear-eyed. “You’ll never be able to entirely secure your environment,” he argues. “So the question is, how are you going to mitigate? And what assets are most important for you to protect? You have to be pretty thoughtful about where you’re putting your energy.”In the era of AI, that means adapting to those bigger, smarter, more complex threats, he says. “Both defenders and the attackers will largely be orchestrating agentic models and/or large language models of some description to both defend and attack … The number of attackers and what they can marshal will grow exponentially. The question is, will defenders be able to match?”

Command Zero is betting that it can help defenders do just that. By combining AI’s speed with human judgment, they’re moving the needle.

*Note: Insight Partners has invested in Command Zero.