Google has launched its own two-word naming taxonomy for cybercrime groups, following its merger of Mandiant into the Google Threat Intelligence Group, assigning category terms such as CASTLE (China), RELIC (Russia), and COMET (non-state actors) as the second word. The move appears to contradict earlier reports that Google and Mandiant were open to joining a Microsoft and CrowdStrike-led industry initiative to standardise threat actor naming, which aimed to reduce the confusion caused by the same groups carrying up to ten different names across vendors. Google claims its system is intentionally simple to allow easy mapping to other taxonomies, though critics may see it as yet another competing schema adding to the existing fragmentation.
