Faith-Based Daily Awareness Post 15 July 2025

Faith-Based Security Headlines

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.

What security measures can churches take?

Following the recent Kentucky church shooting, faith-based leaders are emphasizing the need to work proactively with local law enforcement to strengthen safety at places of worship. The incident has reinforced that no community is immune to violence, and leaders are being encouraged to build relationships with local law enforcement to improve response plans, assess building vulnerabilities, and practice realistic drills. This outreach is viewed as a practical step faith-based communities can take immediately to enhance readiness without creating fear.

Analyst Comments: This article underscores a critical and practical trend that faith-based organizations are increasingly recognizing the need to shift to structured readiness through prevention, preparations, response, and recovery planning. Hosting collective security trainings across multiple churches strengthens community resilience, increasing situational awareness, and normalizes safety discussions in faith-based communities. Initiatives can serve as trust-building opportunities with first responders and emergency management officials, ensuring faster and more effective coordination if an incident occurs.

How Trump’s Cyber Cuts Dismantle Federal Information Sharing

Since President Trump took office in January 2025, the administration has sharply reduced cybersecurity resources across federal agencies like cutting CISA’s budget and workforce by one-third as well as the State Department laying off over 1,300 staff. This is diminishing to public-private threat intelligence sharing at a critical moment of increasing threats to U.S. infrastructure.

Experts highlight that funding, and personnel reductions have harmed CISA’s ability to share threat data with private-sector partners and state/local entities. Former CISA staffers report that directives to suppress advisories or delay disclosures left the agency unable to act swiftly. One ex-staff recalled: “The marching orders were unclear from day one. You can’t be proactive with a ‘wait-and-see’ mindset”. A Supreme Court decision enabled expansive federal workforce layoffs putting additional cyber and IT divisions at risk including intelligence sharing programs with private sector partners.

Analyst Comments: These cuts significantly weaken U.S. cyber defenses at a time of rising threats, limiting CISA’s ability to share threat intelligence and delaying vulnerability management across sectors. The loss of federal coordination and resources could lead to slower responses to incidents and greater exposure for critical infrastructure. To prepare for the reduced cuts for cyber-threat sharing it is important to consider engaging with ISACs and ISAOs to maintain visibility into evolving threats, conduct tabletop exercises as federal response times may be slower, and fill in the gaps by using platforms for IOCs and TTP tracking.

Weekly Security Sprint EP 118. Ripping through the headlines and some P2D2

The Gate 15 Security Sprint is a weekly rundown of the week’s notable all-hazards security news, risks and threats and some of the key focus areas for organizations to consider behind the headlines. Gate 15 team members discuss physical security, cybersecurity, natural hazards, health threats and other issues across our environment.

In this week’s Weekly Security Spring Dave and Andy covered the following topics: