Faith-Based Daily Awareness Post 18 November 2025

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. 

Maryland Man Pleads Guilty to Mailing Threatening Communications to Jewish Institutions and Civil Rights Violations

A Maryland man has been federally charged with 17 counts of mailing threatening communications and eight counts of obstructing the free exercise of religion after allegedly sending more than 40 letters and two postcards between March 2024 and June 2025 to over 25 Jewish institutions including synagogues, schools, museums, community centers, nonprofits, and even a deli. According to court documents, many of the mailings threatened to destroy buildings or harm individuals and, in several instances, the threats included the possible use of weapons, fire, or explosives at synagogues. The individual has pleaded guiltily to all counts, admitting in court filings that his intent was to intimidate Jewish congregants and interfere with their ability to practice their religion. If convicted, he faces up to 169 years in prison, three years of supervised release, and a fine of $5.65 million.

Analyst Comments: This case highlights the ongoing threat landscape facing Jewish institutions and the critical role community organizations play in prevention, early detection, and law-enforcement collaboration. The fact that the offender targeted dozens of synagogues, schools, and nonprofits across multiple states underscores how threat actors often test for vulnerabilities and seek broad psychological impact. Active participation in information-sharing networks like FB-ISAO can amplify impact in situations like this to aid more awarenss and guidance in what to do if this situation occurs in your HOWs. Suspicious activity report SAR reports that can come from other members involved in FB-ISAO can help build vigilance and a stronger collective defense. Your experiences can offer valuable lessons on preparedness, documentation, communication protocols, and sustained collaboration. Sharing those best practices could greatly benefit other faith-based organizations seeking to build mature security and reporting programs.

Join FB-ISAO here.

Survey: 48 Percent of Worshippers Feel Less Safe Attending In-Person Services

A recent survey by Verkada and the Harris Poll of 1,123 U.S. adults who attend religious services monthly found that 48% of worshippers feel less safe at in-person services, due to a rise in violence at places of worship. Consequently, 39% have changed how often they attend in person because of these concerns. The survey also revealed that worry is especially common at largest congregations: 32% of people at places with 500+ attendees say they’re “very concerned”, compared to 18% at smaller ones. Younger generations are the most uneasy, 55% of Gen Z and 61% of Millennials report safety fears, and more than half of both groups have reduced in-person attendance. Meanwhile, although more than half (54%) of worshippers say their place of worship has improved security in the past year, a substantial 33% rate their institution’s security is minimal or non-existent.

Analyst Comments: This matters because places of worship traditionally function as community anchors and rising safety concerns could weaken participation and trust. Larger congregations appear to face greater fear levels, likely because bigger gatherings feel like higher-risk environments, while younger generations show the highest concern and the greatest drop-off in attendance an important long-term challenge for faith communities. Even though more than half of respondents say their congregations have increased security measures, a full third still view their institution’s security as minimal or nonexistent, revealing a significant preparedness gap. The trend also has practical implications: demand for security technology is rising, but smaller or less-resourced congregations may struggle to keep pace.

Cloudflare outage easing after impacting thousands of internet users

A major outage occurred today at web-infrastructure provider Cloudflare disrupted access to thousands of users across multiple platforms, including X and ChatGPT. The disruption began around 6:40 a.m. ET and appears to have been triggered by a spike in unusual traffic to one of Cloudflare’s services. By 8 a.m. ET, incident reports had fallen to around 600 from a peak of nearly 5,000 according to outage-tracking site Down Detector, though the actual number affected could be higher. Cloudflare handles roughly one fifth of the world’s web traffic, so this incident shows how a single point of failure in major internet infrastructure can cascade through many major apps and services.

Analyst Comments: This outage shows a critical risk in modern internet architecture: over-reliance on a few large infrastructure providers. Cloudflare handling a fifth of the web traffic resultin systems failure leads to ripple effects for many platforms. Cloudflare’s quick mitigation efforts and transparency may help but there will need to be long-term improvement in redundancy, monitoring, and capacity.