This DAP highlights 2 staff members of Israeli embassy killed in shooting near Jewish museum in DC, FEMA Has Canceled Its 4-Year Strategic Plan Ahead of Hurricane Season, Review of Security Teams in Light of Recent Legislation in California, and Weekly Security Sprint EP 112. Clinic bombing, Coinbase incident, and weather. The DAP also has More Faith-Based Stories and Select All-Hazard Stories. These updates are shared to help raise the situational awareness of Faith-Based organizations to best defend against and mitigate the impacts from all-hazards threats including physical security, cybersecurity, and natural disasters.
2024 Threat Data Review and Analysis
The Faith-Based Information Sharing and Analysis Organizations (FB-ISAO) provides members with regular reporting on incidents directed at, and affecting, Faith-Based Organizations (FBOs) throughout the year. Our incident reporting is derived from numerous sources including open-source reporting shared in the FB-ISAO Slack workspace as well as from our public and private partners at the federal, state, and local levels. This reporting can help organizations understand and prepare for the various threats and risks that they may face. In 2024, we recorded 841 attacks on Houses of Worship.
Members were briefed on the findings on 07 May 2025. The recording of the session is available on FB-ISAO Slack in the #fb-isao_recordings channel. If you are not a member, join now to access the recording. The briefing covered the following areas of concern:
- Attacks on individual faiths
- Monthly distribution of attacks
- Location of attacks
- The most common types of attack (e.g. vandalism, arson etc.) and how they vary by target affiliation
- Implications that can be drawn from the data
When considering the targeting of FBOs by faith tradition:
- 49% were against Protestant churches.
- 21% targeted Jewish synagogues.
- 16% were against Catholic churches.
- 7% targeted mosques.
Below are highlights and observations:
- Protestant churches were the most frequently attacked, with 415 incidents — nearly half (49%) of all attacks nationwide.
- Jewish, Catholic, and Muslim institutions continued to face disproportionately high threat levels. Though these groups make up a relatively small (<10%) percentage of U.S. houses of worship, they were collectively targeted in nearly 50% of all incidents.
- Firearms were involved in 13% of incidents.
- The majority of serious threats in late 2023 came in the form of bomb threats and swatting, which require no proximity to the target and offer minimal risk of detection for the perpetrator. While these dropped significantly in 2024, they remain a core part of the threat environment, particularly for Jewish and Catholic institution.
The FB-ISAO will publish a robust report in the late summer / early fall of 2025.
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