Morning Security Brief: European Terror Threat, Cloud Security, SSN Confusion, European Intel Sharing, & French Gov Crying Wolf?

♦ Despite the fall in terrorist attacks in Europe, Europol says the threat remains grave a day after a Mumbai-style plot against Berlin, London, and Paris was reportedly disrupted by CIA drone strikes. "Robert Wainwright, director of the European police organization, said a drop in terror attacks in Europe - coupled with intelligence that had thwarted major plots in the past - masked the ongoing threat," The Associated Press reports. "There has been a significant decline in the number of terrorist attacks in Europe - certainly committed by Islamist groups - that hides the reality that these groups are still active," he told the AP.

♦ A new survey says that business and IT executives are still wary of putting sensitive data in the cloud. "Sixty-two percent of you have little to no confidence in your ability to secure any assets that you put in the cloud. Even among the 49 percent of respondents who have ventured into cloud computing, more than a third (39 percent) have major qualms about security," reports CSO Online. "Asked what they think is the greatest risk to their cloud computing strategy, respondents said they were uncertain about their ability to enforce security policies at a provider site, and were concerned about inadequate training and IT auditing."

♦ More than 20 million Americans have more than one Social Security number attached to their name, reports The Denver Post. "The study by ID Analytics Inc. in San Diego also found that about 100,000 Americans have five or more of the numbers tagged to their identity," the paper reports. "Most of the associations are innocuous — a mistakenly entered digit or a transposition of two numerals — with little or no intent to defraud the legitimate owner, experts say. But the ones that aren't so innocent are the most damaging of frauds because they're designed to steal, or even just borrow, a person's identity." Other problems associated with multiple Social Security numbers are credit and medical history mix-ups.

♦ In reaction to the disrupted plot, terrorism expert Paul Wilkinson argues the United Kingdom would be foolish to cut its intelligence budget. Instead, European intelligence services should be coordinating their efforts. "The European Union has not yet developed a Europe-wide counter terrorism organisation," he writes in The Scotsman. "This is an urgent task for bilateral co-operation between governments. Al-Qaeda is still planning attacks in western countries as well as Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan. We need to remain vigilant, well prepared and resilient."

♦ Interestingly enough, the day before the disrupted plot was made public, TIME reported that some French believe a slew of recent terrorism warnings is more about politics than public security. "On Tuesday, a day after a bomb threat closed down traffic at Paris' Gare Saint-Lazare train station, Prime Minister François Fillon met with leaders of parliamentary parties to explain the exceptional string of public terrorism warnings by officials. Fillon had good reason for sharing," according to the magazine. "Opposition figures and pundits alike have loudly speculated that the troubling pronouncements are actually a ruse to turn attention away from scandals that have implicated government members and from growing protest against pension reform."