Faith-Based Daily Awareness Post 10 August 2023

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.

Multiple Physical Security Resources for Houses of Worship

An Insurance Board Security Resource Guide: PDF

This one-pager lists multiple resources that houses of worship can use to protect themselves by adopting a comprehensive and multilayered security strategy.

A Disaster Preparedness Manual for Churches 

This 24-page manual is a joint resource from United Church of Christ Disaster Ministries and the Insurance Board.

From the manual’s introduction: “This manual speaks to 1) how you can prepare your church as a building, 2) how you can prepare your church as a community and 3) how you can prepare your church to be ready to serve your wider community when an event occurs. There are specific preparedness steps you will need to take related to each of these ways your church exists in the world which will allow you to best be able to care for yourselves and your community during and immediately after a disaster.”

The United Church of Christ website also has a blog on Local Church Security: Resources and Best Practices.

4 Ways to Make Your Church Safer – Lifeway Research

This Lifeway Research product discusses the following steps to make your house of worship safer.

1. Organize a team
2. Conduct thorough safety assessments of your church  
3. Develop a safety plan
4. Prioritize training and preparedness

Emergency preparedness seminar for houses of worship and faith-based communities.

The New Hampton Community Church will be hosting an Emergency Preparedness Seminar for Houses of Worship and Faith-Based Communities on Saturday, Aug. 12, from noon to 3 p.m. Presented by New Hampshire Homeland Security and Emergency Management.

Exterior door security, school resource officers parts of Tennessee school security for 2023-24

Public, private, and church schools in Tennessee have a new mandate: Keep exterior school doors locked or secured with an employee gatekeeper, even for after-school events when students are present.

The law in part is a response to a March 27 shooting of three children and three adults at The Covenant School, a Presbyterian Church in Green Hills neighborhood of Nashville, after which the proposed legislation was enhanced.

While secure doors are a must, the following item discusses a vulnerability of badge-reader door security: Badge of Shame – Breaking Into Secure Facilities with OSDP

The Evolution of Risk Intelligence and How to Use it for Real-time Security (webinar)

This webinar will cover processing risk intelligence to defend businesses from all industry sectors. FBOs should be able to use some of the processes provided in this webinar.

Analyst Comment:

While the vast and varied number of physical-security resources and articles can be overwhelming, the current threats to Faith-Based Organizations (FBO) are also vast and varied.

An FBO’s preparations before an incident, and actions during an incident, can change the outcome of an attack. An FBO cannot do everything right away, but could do something today to start protecting against an attack. Having a threat-informed, risk-based approach to analysis, preparedness, and operations will allow FBOs to best utilize limited resources.

FBOs should consider finding a “champion” in your organization who will be passionate about physical security for your house of worship and providing the champion with the resources to protect your membership.

The Faith-Based ISAO website also provides a variety of physical security resources at Resource Library – FB-ISAO (faithbased-isao.org).