Source: Pixabay

Art treasures of very high value, which are also historically or scientifically significant, lurk in museums. At the same time, the artifacts should also be accessible to the public. However, making the objects accessible to a public always involves many risks.

Security concepts for museums must therefore often be individually tailored to the operation or outside opening hours. Visitors, buildings and employees are also dependent on security measures. According to the German Federal Association for Security Technology (Bundesverband Sicherheitstechnik e.V., BHE), a multi-level structure of security measures is expedient. In addition, care should be taken to review the protective measures at any time in the event of a change in the risk situation, for example in the case of new exhibits.

A new brochure, which can be requested free of charge from the BHE (info@bhe.de), shows which possibilities modern security technologies offer for the protection of cultural assets and how ways to tailor protection can be outlined.

Source: BHE 

Military insurance, which is managed by Suva as an independent social insurance company, achieved a good result in the 2020 financial year in terms of both insurance services and administrative costs. A total of 173.5 million Swiss francs in insurance benefits were paid out, a decrease of 2.4 percent compared with the previous year's figure of 177.7 million Swiss francs.

Sports accidents most common

The Swiss Armed Forces performed around 350,000 service days in 2020 in connection with the Corona pandemic. Despite this, the number of service days performed had fallen by five percent in the previous year. Musculoskeletal disorders continued to be the most frequently reported, accounting for more than 20 percent. Among accidental injuries, facial fractures, mainly dental fractures, accounted for 13 percent of all cases.

Sprains, strains, torn ligaments or tendons in the knee area were also very significant. Sports accidents accounted for almost 24 percent of all accidents in 2020.

Source: Suva

From "Autowindow" of the Bern University of Applied Sciences, there is a follow-up project. It is being further developed under the name "M-Window" to enable the digitization of window systems for end users.

Bedroom windows in urban areas, for example, require such a combination. The original project consisted of a feasibility study on the economic viability of functioning automatic windows for residential buildings. Key points are criteria such as minimizing the noise development of a window drive, research at the interface to building technology and, for example, decoupling the locking mechanism from the rotary movement mechanism.

As Urs Uehlinger explained at the "Windays" a few weeks ago, ventilation, safety and noise functions are to be automated, while at the same time improving energy efficiency. One of the challenges is to intelligently combine sound insulation and ventilation.

The project will run until 2023. Initiated by the Bern University of Applied Sciences, the Workshop of the Future is intended to be an open and neutral learning, development, test and demo environment at full scale.

Source: BFH

The construction industry is increasingly relying on robots, if the industrial group ABB has its way. The industrial group is therefore also working with ETH, to develop automated construction technologies. According to the Swiss technology company, nine out of ten construction companies want to introduce robots by 2030 to accelerate safety and environmental aspects.

According to industry forecasts, the total value of the construction industry worldwide will increase by 85 percent to $15.5 trillion by 2030. In internal analyses, ABB predicts high double-digit growth rates for the market potential of robotic automation, especially in key areas of construction, including precast and 3D printing. This is likely to be particularly evident over the next decade.

Source: ABB 

The construction industry is increasingly relying on robots, if the industrial group ABB has its way. The industrial group is therefore also working with ETH, to develop automated construction technologies. According to the Swiss technology company, nine out of ten construction companies want to introduce robots by 2030 to accelerate safety and environmental aspects.

According to industry forecasts, the total value of the construction industry worldwide will increase by 85 percent to $15.5 trillion by 2030. In internal analyses, ABB predicts high double-digit growth rates for the market potential of robotic automation, especially in key areas of construction, including precast and 3D printing. This is likely to be particularly evident over the next decade.

Source: ABB 

Due to the positive development of the case numbers and the progress in vaccination, the Federal Council is planning another larger opening step before the summer vacations. A final decision will be made on June 23, when the effects of the fourth opening step on May 31 will also be visible. The mask requirement in outdoor areas of publicly accessible facilities, leisure facilities, train stations and bus stops is to be lifted, as well as on the outside decks of ships and on chairlifts.

As envisaged in the three-phase model, the Covid certificate is now also to be used. It is mandatory for large events and in discos. Events with fewer than 1,000 people, sports, cultural and leisure establishments, and restaurants can restrict access to people with a Covid certificate in order to benefit from facilitations in protective measures. The certificate may not be used in areas of everyday life, such as public transport, retail outlets or private events.

Restaurants: Six people per table instead of four

Inside restaurants, six people will now be allowed to sit at each table instead of four. As before, seating is compulsory. Outside, the restriction on the size of groups of guests and the seating requirement are to be abolished. Anyone moving around inside a restaurant will have to wear a mask. The contact details of all guests must still be collected.

At the end of May, the Federal Council has already decided that large events with Covid certificate will be possible again from July. Now it is proposing various adjustments. For example, the mask requirement is to be simplified: only those moving around indoors will have to wear a mask. In addition, the maximum number of people is to be standardized: a maximum of 3000 people can take part indoors, 5000 outdoors, regardless of whether seating is compulsory. Two-thirds of the capacity may always be used.

Reopen discos and dance halls

Discotheques and dance clubs are allowed to reopen if access is restricted to people with a valid Covid certificate. A maximum of 250 people may be present at the same time. Wearing a mask can be waived, contact details of the guests are to be collected.

It will now also be possible to sell validated self-tests in drugstores and retail outlets. However, the federally funded distribution of five self-tests per person per month will continue to be available only in pharmacies and will be limited to people who have not been vaccinated or recovered.

According to several studies, vaccination with the vaccines approved in Switzerland should be effective for longer than six months. On June 23, the Federal Council will decide on a longer duration of vaccine efficacy based on the assessment of the Commission for Vaccination Questions.

Source: Federal Council

McDonald's has been the victim of a cyberattack. According to a report by the news agency DPA, unknown persons succeeded in gaining access to a small amount of personal data. However, according to current knowledge, only data from Korea and Taiwan was affected.

McDonald's has already hired outside specialists to investigate the activities in the internal security system. The perpetrators had succeeded in gaining access to data on employees, franchise partners and restaurants in the United States. The stolen data in South Korea and Taiwan is personal customer data, but does not include payment information.

According to a report by the "Wall Street Journal"However, the information was not sensitive. According to an internal memo from the fast food chain, the size of playgrounds and seating capacities were affected. However, no encryption Trojans were smuggled in. Recently, cyberattacks in which company computers are encrypted have become more frequent.

Just a few weeks ago, such a large-scale ransomware attack took place on one of the largest gasoline pipelines in the US. The operators paid the extortionists a ransom of $4.4 million. In the meantime, however, the FBI managed to recover a large part of the damage sum from the extortionists.

Source: Heise/Spiegel (dpa)

Work is something good, working a lot is also a positive thing in our society and for the most part. This is not necessarily accompanied by excessive demands or even a possible burnout. Those who work often and a lot can certainly do so with pleasure and experience fulfillment as a result. Even if the danger of workaholism lurks among those who do an above-average amount, this term tends to have a positive connotation. Only the increase of this leads to the actual work addiction and the border to a disease comes closer. What characterizes work addicts? They are people who show typical addictive behavior, i.e. they need more and more of one thing to get through the day. Thus, they are trapped in the continuous loop associated with it: Their entire self-esteem is based on their work, so they are no longer able to separate themselves from it, work compulsively and live a pronounced perfectionism.

Where does workaholism lurk?

People in modern society work much more than the generations before them in previous centuries. With the Enlightenment came a modern promise that extended through the industrial to the digital revolution to globalization: people will be freed from work. To this day, it has remained an assurance. In fact, in the meantime, rough, manual or repetitive work has been outsourced to machines or to the IT world. What remains astonishing, however, is that people - no sooner have they got rid of physically hard work - take back their lack of freedom with workaholism.

Work addiction is a form of dependence. One can no longer be without work and develops a high desire for the activity and the corresponding recognition through it. Performance addiction is a part of this, one wants to prove something to oneself. Workaholism is described as an excessive need for work. In this state, important, other areas of life lose importance. Thus, social contacts gradually break down and the compulsion to define oneself through work continues to increase. The spiral sets in motion and, as with any addiction, the dose must be constantly increased for satisfaction. Eventually, this can lead to illness. Those who permanently work more than 50 hours per week are already very close to workholism.

Addiction to prestige, performance and work

The causes of work addiction are often to be found in exaggerated commitment. Executives and self-employed people are often affected, who work so hard and experience a high level of satisfaction from successes and results, encouragement and further orders or projects. If this remains a temporary phase and an appropriate balance is found, this can be seen as a positive thing. However, it becomes risky when this high level of commitment is closely linked to the personal value system and the manifestation of self-esteem.

Those who link their own value to work performance are more quickly affected by workaholism. Out of the compulsion to want to do everything perfectly in order to appear valuable to oneself and others, the ability to separate the essential from the unessential is lost. In order to get everything done at all, there are extra shifts at night and extra work at the weekend. Therapists explain that someone tends to such a form of addiction based on upbringing, heredity, personal life history and social circumstances; influences from society also play a role. But what are the symptoms that help you recognize work addiction?

• You think more and more, even outside working hours, about your work.
• You think about where you can procure even more time for your work and sacrifice free time, hobbies and social contacts for it.
• They develop a high degree of perfectionism and lose the ability to set priorities.
• You feel that you are basically working too much.
• You do some neat planning and find that you always spend more time working than you intended.
• Due to time constraints, you put off higher-level tasks, which puts even more pressure on you.
• They forget appointments and can't explain it.
• You feel angry about your circumstances and experience feelings of guilt or the first signs of depression.
• You develop physical withdrawal symptoms when you can't devote yourself to work (wi-fi free zones, illness, vacation with family, etc.).
• They have difficulty making decisions and increase the workload to accommodate everything and everyone.
• You doggedly pursue goals or plans that you want to push through at any cost.

Tips

If you want to recognize whether you are at risk, the first step is to be honest with yourself. Do the first symptoms show up regularly? There is a difference between working almost around the clock for four weeks on a project and displaying the corresponding behaviors over a period of several months or years. Start with a binding work plan for yourself:

• Involve friends and family, and allow them to be explicit about when you are working too much.
• Be very rigid with leisure appointments, so embrace football night with your friends and your child's birthday party as dutifully as you do your business appointments.
• Turn off mobile devices in the evening and create islands of time when you're not working.
• Learn to trust others - this creates the opportunity to delegate.
• Learn not to make your self-esteem exclusively dependent on work.

About the Author: 

Stefan Häseli is a communication trainer, keynote speaker, moderator and author of several books. He runs a training company in Switzerland. For years, the communications expert has accompanied numerous companies and boards of multinational corporations. 

If a company wants to offer private security services from Switzerland, it must notify the competent federal authority in advance. This is required by the Federal Act on Private Security Services Provided Abroad (BPS), which has been in force since September 1, 2015. The Export Control and Private Security Services Section (SEPS) of the State Secretariat of the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA) is responsible for implementing the law.

In 2020 SEPS received 495 notifications. They mainly concerned four groups of activities: Personal protection and guarding of goods and properties in a complex environment, law enforcement services, private intelligence activities and support to armed or security forces. About half of the reported activities were carried out in North Africa, the Middle East, and Europe and Central Asia, SEPS writes in its fifth activity report.

SEPS initiated three investigation procedures in 2020. In one case, the planned activity was prohibited. In a second case, the notification was withdrawn by the company. A third case was still pending at the end of the reporting period. Two bans were issued for activities reported in 2019.

Private security services that could lead to direct participation in hostilities or serious human rights violations were not identified in 2020. Such activities are prohibited under the BPS.

Source: DFA

The implementation of 5G will increase speed, security and efficiency in the manufacturing industry. However, according to a study by Trend Micro, many companies are in a bind. They are unlikely to be able to afford the downtime to patch critical vulnerabilities early. In its study, the Japanese security company identifies several gateways that affect 4G and 5G networks.

• Servers hosting core network services: Attacks target vulnerabilities and weak passwords in standardized commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) servers based on x86 architectures.
• Virtual machines (VM) or containers: These can also be vulnerable if the latest patches are not applied promptly.
• Network infrastructure: Appliances are often overlooked in patching cycles.
• base stations: These also contain firmware that must be updated from time to time.

Microsoft Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) is still considered one of the eleven most malicious attack scenarios. Upgrading to 5G will not automatically protect RDP traffic from ransomware and malware. By attacking industrial control systems in smart manufacturing environments, cybercriminals could also steal data, sabotage production, or extort the company.

The study lists the following recommendations for protecting 4G/5G campus networks:

• VPN or IPSec to protect remote communication channels, including to remote sites and base stations.
• Application-level encryption (HTTPS, MQTTS, LDAPS, encrypted VNC, RDP version 10.0, and secure industry protocols such as S7COMM-Plus).
• EDR, XDR or MDR (Detection & Response) to monitor attacks and lateral movement within the campus and containerized core network.
• Proper network separation with VLAN or SDN.
• Prompt patching of servers, routers and base stations, if possible.
• Anomaly detection products, such as Trend Micro Mobile Network Security, that detect the campus network and provide a robust way to take down unknown device/SIM card pairs.

The full report, "Attacks From 4G/5G Core Networks," is available at available in english language.

Source: Trend Micro

The Covid 19 pandemic will have a lasting impact on national and international security policy. Switzerland's security environment will continue to be significantly shaped by the growing competition between the major powers. Violent right-wing and left-wing extremists are trying to exploit protest potential in society for their own ends. Especially in protracted or even worsening crises such as the current Covid 19 pandemic, this potential can increase. In addition to attempts at instrumentalization by the known violent extremist scenes, there is also a risk that protest will intensify and in some cases become violent without their involvement.

The Great Powers' Striving for Influence

Under President Joe Biden, the U.S. will nurture its global alliance system again as well as return to engaged diplomacy in a multilateral framework and the defense of democracy. Its security focus will remain on strategic competition with China. Within NATO, the United States will continue to solicit support from allies and partners vis-à-vis China, namely in the area of advanced technology. In the conflict with Iran, the new administration is prioritizing negotiations.

China's rise as a major global power is all but certain. The strategic orientation of becoming the strongest world power by the middle of the century will remain the basis of Chinese government action. The focus is not on integration by adopting international norms and rules. Rather, the Communist Party is increasingly presenting the Chinese model of government as an alternative to liberal democracy.

Russia's foreign and security policy leeway remains intact despite the focus on the internal development of the Putin system. Russia is successfully using its limited resources abroad with relatively little effort to strengthen its own sphere of influence. On its western border, it wants to regain influence over NATO and the EU that was lost with the collapse of the Soviet Union. One of the things Russia has in common with Turkey is its confrontational policy toward Europe, even though there are considerable differences of interest. As a tandem, both states could expand their positions vis-à-vis Europe and gain further influence in the Mediterranean region.

Large increase in espionage activities in cyberspace

Espionage remains an ever-present challenge. Digitization and networking are enabling a sharp increase in espionage in cyberspace. The targets of foreign espionage remain unchanged; Geneva remains a focal point due to the presence of international organizations and a large number of diplomatic missions. Foreign intelligence services pose a direct threat to certain target groups in Switzerland and can be involved in influencing activities against Swiss interests.

Risk for terrorist attacks with low logistical effort

The terror threat in Switzerland remains heightened. It emanates primarily from the jihadist movement. The attacks carried out in 2020 in Switzerland and in neighboring France, Germany and Austria confirm this assessment.

Attacks with little organizational and logistical effort, perpetrated by autonomously acting lone perpetrators, are the most likely threat. Any attacks are likely to be primarily directed against so-called soft targets such as groups of people, poorly secured buildings and public transport facilities. Increasingly, radicalization and violent orientation among perpetrators also coincide with personal crises or psychological problems.

To the detailed situation report "Security Switzerland 2021" (PDF)

Source: NDB

Many modern sports watches or smartwatches have integrated LED diodes. These emit continuous or pulsed green light that penetrates the skin and is used, among other things, to measure the pulse during exercise or at rest.

Such clocks are now in widespread use. That's why ETH researchers led by Martin Fussenegger from the Department of Biosystems in Basel want to use this light source to control genes through the skin and change the behavior of cells. The difficulty here is that "a molecular system that reacts to green light does not exist naturally in human cells," Fussenegger emphasizes, "so we had to construct something new."

Green light of the clock activated gene

The ETH professor and his colleagues finally developed a molecular switch that - once implanted - can be activated with green light from smartwatches.

The switch is coupled to a genetic network that the researchers added to human cells. For this prototype, they used HEK cells as usual. Depending on the configuration of this network - in other words, which genes it is equipped with - it can produce insulin, for example, as soon as green light hits the cells. If the light is switched off, the switch is inactivated and the process stops.

Standard software used

The researchers used the smartwatch's standard software for this and did not even have to develop their own programs. In their experiments, they were able to turn on the green light by starting the "running app." "Such off-the-shelf watches can be used universally to flip the molecular switch," Fussenegger says. New models send the light in pulsed mode, which is even better for keeping the gene network running.

The molecular switch, however, is more complicated. A molecular complex has been incorporated into the membrane of HEK cells that is coupled to a corresponding counterpart, similar to a railroad car coupler. As soon as the green light is switched on, the piece projecting into the cell interior detaches and is transported into the cell nucleus. There it switches on a gene that produces insulin. As soon as the green light goes out, the detached part reconnects with the counterpart anchored in the membrane.

Control implant with wearables

The researchers tested their system both on a bacon rind and on living mice, in which they implanted the appropriate cells and strapped on a smartwatch like a backpack. By starting the watch's running program, the researchers turned on the green light and set the cascade in motion.

"This is the first time that commercially available smart electronic devices worn on the surface of the skin, so-called wearables, can be used to control such an implant," the ETH professor points out. Most watches have a green light, so it makes sense to gear a potential future application toward that. That way, users would not have to buy a special device.

However, it would take at least 10 years for the technology to reach the clinic, Fussenegger estimates. The cells used in this prototype would have to be replaced by the user's own cells; the system would also have to get through the clinical phases before being approved. The hurdles for this are high: "To date, there are very few approved cell therapies," Fussenegger emphasizes.

Source: ETH News