Clear threat naming means faster response when your firm is under cyberattack. Thanks to a new collaboration between Microsoft and CrowdStrike, your IT team or your outsourced cybersecurity partner can now identify adversaries more quickly, act more decisively, and keep your firm safer.
Understanding who is attacking your firm and why is critical for your IT team. Every second matters. Yet for years, inconsistent naming of cybercriminal or nation-state groups has caused confusion, hesitation, and delayed response.
Think of the Russian-linked group often called Cozy Bear by some analysts and Midnight Blizzard by others. Or the Chinese-backed actor variously referred to as Volt Typhoon, Vanguard Panda, or Salt Typhoon.
This inconsistency is not just a matter of style. It impacts your ability to defend your law firm effectively when you can’t even properly identify the threat.
Why This Happens
Different cybersecurity organizations and even internal research teams use their own naming conventions. Each develops names based on their telemetry, tools, and internal logic.
One firm might lean on meteorological metaphors, another might use animal themes, and a third might rely on alphabet-numeric codes. Over time, these differences stack up.
Suddenly one hacking group has multiple identities. This multiplies the effort required by your in-house teams or your IT services provider to connect the dots across threat intelligence sources.
What It Means for Law Firms
When your IT support or managed service is trying to analyze threat reports or respond to incidents, this naming chaos (and it is chaos) can slow everything down. Mismatched names lead to duplicated effort and missed connections.
In critical moments, delays can meaningfully increase risk. Harm from data breaches is not hypothetical. Leaks or disruptions from serious adversaries can result in exposure of sensitive client information, regulatory investigations, reputational damage, and even operational shutdowns.
You need clarity. Not marketing flair. Without it, the wrong assumption about who or what you’re up against can be costly.
What Microsoft and CrowdStrike Are Doing About It
In June 2025, Microsoft and CrowdStrike launched a collaboration to address precisely this problem. They did not aim to impose a single naming system across the industry. Instead, they developed a shared translation tool – a “Rosetta Stone” for threat actor names.
This mapping system connects aliases from different naming systems so analysts can instantly see that one name refers to the same actor tracked under another name.
They’ve already deconflicted more than 80 adversaries. For example, Microsoft’s Volt Typhoon and CrowdStrike’s Vanguard Panda are now mapped as the same Chinese-state actor. Secret Blizzard and Venomous Bear are identified as the same Russia-linked group.
Importantly, this effort maintains each vendor’s unique naming methodology while enabling instant translation across systems. That means you and your IT support no longer have to interpret whether COZY BEAR is the same as Midnight Blizzard, Salt Typhoon, or Operator Panda.
How the System Works in Practice
Microsoft has even formalized its taxonomy using weather-themed naming.
For example:
- “Typhoon” designates Chinese state-sponsored actors
- “Blizzard” signals Russian actors
- “Tempest,” “Storm,” or “Tsunami” might be applied to financially motivated or commercial offensive actors
Threat actor categories include nation-state, financially motivated, private sector offensive actors, influence operations, and groups in development.
Under the new mapping system, Microsoft and CrowdStrike, joined by security partners such as Palo Alto Networks and Google’s Mandiant, are coordinating updates and maintaining a shared reference.
The goal is to expand the community of contributors so the epidemiology of cyber threats becomes more transparent industry-wide.
Benefits for Your Law Firm
This might seem high level and not related to your day-to-day business, but you will reap the benefits.
- Faster Response: When your IT team sees a threat report, they instantly recognize the adversary, regardless of naming source. That means faster triage, investigation, and mitigation.
- Simplified Communication: No more confusion when discussing reports from different vendors. Everyone speaks the same language, even with differing internal tools.
- Stronger Incident Briefings: When briefing your partners, compliance officers, or board, you avoid awkward explanations about “cute” names that undermine credibility.
- Resource Efficiency: Less time spent reconciling names means more time strengthening your defenses. That includes patching systems, conducting threat hunts, or coordinating with law enforcement.
The Bigger Picture
Some industry leaders have raised concerns that whimsical names like Laundry Bear or Vengeful Kitten trivialize threats and derail communication with executives.
Thought leaders from CISA and the UK’s NCSC have called for a neutral, public taxonomy to avoid giving criminals accidental branding or mystique.
These are good points, and this new collaboration is a step toward that goal, but it still relies on cross-vendor coordination rather than enforcing a single naming standard.
Microsoft and CrowdStrike’s threat actor naming alignment means a simpler, clearer, more unified trenches mobilization for cyber defense. For law firms and their outsourced IT teams, it means speed, clarity, and confidence when seconds count.