Walter Briccos (left in picture) hands over to Martin Kofler (right in picture) after 34 years in the business. 

Walter Briccos, the CEO of Eizo Switzerland, retires from professional life at the age of 61. Martin Kofler will follow in his footsteps. His professional career includes six years at Bang & Olufsen, where he was Country Manager Switzerland. He also held various management positions at Sharp, Ricoh and Lexmark.

"The two very intensive years at Eizo AG were an exciting, challenging and also enjoyable time for me, during which we achieved a lot as a team," the outgoing Walter Briccos is quoted as saying. But now the "ideal time" has come for him to retire.

His successor will start on June 1 and will take over as CEO and member of the Board of Directors of Eizo AG Switzerland from August 1, 2021.

Source: Eizo Switzerland

Screenshot: Digital Society

The Digitale Gesellschaft, a non-profit network society for digital rights, has launched a web service through which interested parties can easily request information about their own data from companies and authorities.

Via the online tool at request for information.ch persons can request information about their data. It is also possible to have incorrect data corrected or data deleted. Among the data that can be requested is, for example, data retention data from mobile phone providers. However, it is also possible to request one's own health data from health insurance companies or data on creditworthiness from credit rating databases.

Such information must be provided in full within 30 days. The online generator was designed with special attention to user-friendliness and "privacy by design," says Erik Schönberger, managing director of the Digital Society and head of the project.

Source: Digital Society

Corona-related occupational accident figures for 2020 were down, as expected. Due to the restricted range of motion, there were generally fewer
Accidents.

The corona pandemic can therefore also be seen as something positive. The "normal" previous year, on the other hand, shows a clearly different picture. The 27 accident insurers in Switzerland reported more than 860,000 occupational and leisure accidents involving employed persons and persons seeking employment for 2019. Compared to 2018, this represented an increase of 1.5 percent. (Source accident statistics UVG 2020).

In 2020, there were 9.8 percent fewer occupational accidents. Particularly after the lockdown from mid-March 2020, the accident figures fell sharply. Suva then registered almost only half as many accidents as in the previous year. The sharpest decline in occupational accidents was recorded in aviation, with a drop of 54 percent. As already mentioned, everything is directly related to the pandemic and less work. In previous years, the situation was completely different with increasing numbers of cases, also from a financial point of view. All accident insurers together paid around five billion francs in medical costs, daily allowances or disability pensions in 2018 alone.

Accidents are costly and resource-intensive ... This is well known. So how do we avoid accidents in our day-to-day work? Where do we apply the prevention lever? Which ASGS measures are effective? Acting instead of reacting is the order of the day. After all, something doesn't necessarily have to happen before action is taken. Or does it? How do we learn from accidents and thereby gain awareness for healthy and safe work? Where, despite economic pressure, is saving money out of place? The current conference uncovers and provides answers to these and other questions.

Further information and the complete conference program at:
save.ch/event/work-safety-learn-from-accidents-and-draw-consequences

Source: Save Inc. - a company of the Galledia Group

Source: Gartner 

Security and risk management executives must, according to research and consulting firm Gartner consider a number of aspects in the near future to enable a rapid redesign of their business. The reason for this lies primarily in the accelerated digital transformation set in motion by the pandemic.

Cybersecurity Mesh
With many IT resources now outside the traditional enterprise perimeter, organizations will extend security controls to distributed resources using a cybersecurity network architecture.

Identity-First Security
Identity-first security puts identity at the center of security design and requires a significant departure from traditional thinking, he said.

Remote work will stay
Surveys by Gartner have shown that at least 30 to 40 percent will continue to work from home after the Covid 19 pandemic, he said.

Cyber savvy board of directors
Large companies are already starting to establish a dedicated cybersecurity committee at the board level, usually with an outside consultant.

Consolidation of suppliers
The large number of security tools also increases complexity and staffing requirements. According to a Gartner survey, 80 percent of the IT organizations surveyed will consolidate their vendors.

Increased attack simulation
More so-called breach and attack simulation (BAS) tools will be developed to enable continuous defense posture assessments.

Read the full trend report

Source: Gartner

Anyone working outdoors at temperatures above 25 degrees can quickly suffer from sunstroke. A distinction must be made between different stages of heat illness: above all between heat cramps, heat exhaustion or sunstroke and heat stroke.

Briefly, heat cramps are brief, cramp-like pains in muscles, for example, during demanding outdoor exercise in the sun. In sunstroke or heat exhaustion, water loss causes a decrease in blood volume, which may be symptomatically reflected in a flushing of the head or partial nausea. In heat stroke, the body can no longer regulate the temperature and sudden collapse of the organ systems may occur at about 40 °C.

According to Irene Kunz, an occupational physician at Suva, however, simple tips can help protect against overheating: for example, drink plenty of fluids, wear sun-protective clothing throughout the day, rest regularly, adjust your work rhythm - and again: drink plenty of fluids, preferably spread throughout the day. But what to do in case of heat cramp, sunstroke or heat stroke? Suva describes the symptoms and what to do in an emergency. in this guide article.

According to information from Swissmedic, approximately 3.7 million vaccine doses were administered in Switzerland up to and including May 18, 2021, and approximately 1.24 million people were fully vaccinated. Retrospectively, Swissmedic said the reporting rate has declined somewhat in recent weeks, falling from one report to 0.8 reports per 1,000 doses vaccinated. Most notifications report more than one reaction (a total of 5931 reactions in the 2269 notifications, or an average of 2.6 reactions per notification).

Fever and headache as secondary symptoms in both mild and severe cases

The most commonly reported reactions in cases classified as serious were fever, headache or migraine, shortness of breath, herpes zoster reactivation, fatigue, muscle pain, malaise, hypersensitivity, anaphylactic reactions, nausea, chills, vomiting, and blood pressure elevation. Because a report contains more than one reaction in most cases, reactions such as fever or headache are reported in cases that are considered severe overall as well as in non-severe cases.

Severe cases often seen in older individuals with preexisting conditions

In 84 of the severe cases, the individuals died at varying time intervals after vaccination. The deceased were on average 82 years old and the majority had severe pre-existing conditions. These reports were analyzed particularly carefully, according to Swissmedic, and final autopsy results are pending in a few cases. Despite a temporal association, according to current knowledge, diseases occurring independently of the vaccinations, such as infections, cardiovascular events, or pulmonary and respiratory diseases, led to death. Currently, there is also no international evidence that either mRNA vaccine leads to an increased rate of death.

Source: Swissmedic

As Siemens writes in a press release, the technology group was able to maintain its sales last year. This amounts to a total of 1.072 billion Swiss francs and is thus at the previous year's level. Matthias Rebellius, member of the Managing Board of Siemens AG, was quoted in a press release as saying that "Siemens is playing a key role in the digitalization of infrastructure and is driving decarbonization forward. The company is very well positioned overall.

The basis for success is good cooperation and mutual trust, says Gerd Scheller, who has been in office as Country Manager since January 2021. "I am very pleased that we are all pulling in the same direction - customers, partners and the 5300 Siemens employees in Switzerland."

Siemens has a strong market position in Switzerland in building technology and power distribution as well as in industrial automation, industrial software and drive technology.

The total time spent on paid and unpaid work in 2020 was around 46 hours per week for both women and men aged 15 and older. Women consistently spent more time on household and family work (28.7 hours per week versus 19.1 hours).

Conversely, men devoted more time on average to paid gainful employment (25.3 hours per week versus 15.8 hours). Since 2010, however, men's time spent on domestic and family work has been steadily increasing and their gainful employment hours decreasing. These are some of the findings of the Swiss Labor Force Survey conducted by the Federal Statistical Office (FSO).

To the full report

Source: Federal Statistical Office

Sophos has published its "Active Adversary Playbook 2021." In the booklet, the cybersecurity company describes which tools are typically used in cyberattacks. The report is based on findings of tools, techniques and procedures used by hackers. It examined telemetry data and 81 investigations of various incidents by the Sophos managed threat response team. The report focuses on better identifying attack tactics in networks. The results show that attackers typically linger on the network for eleven days before they are even detected. Ransomware was involved in 81 percent of cases, and the remote desktop protocol (RDP) was used to infiltrate networks in 69 percent of cases.

The eleven-day dwell time on networks compares to 264 hours for potential criminal activity such as access theft. Eleven days is an infinite amount of time to cause damage on a company's network, according to Sophos. The Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) played a role in 90 percent of the attacks.

"The threat landscape is becoming increasingly confusing and complex. Cybercriminals are launching their attacks with a wide variety of skills and resources, from script kiddies to state-backed hacker groups. This makes the job difficult for defenders," said John Shier, senior security advisor at Sophos.

Other topics from the Advisory Playbook (free) are the most commonly used attack techniques and tactics, the earliest signs of an attack, the most commonly observed threat types, and the most commonly identified hacker groups.

Source: Sophos

In 2020, police crime statistics identified 24,398 crimes committed on the Internet. The vast majority of the offenses related to the cyber fraud component (around 16,400 offenses). This also included fraud in connection with online stores, real estate ads or romance scams.

More cyber sex crimes and thefts from vehicles

The FSO statistics also show 32,398 burglaries and sneak-ins. However, the latter had decreased by around 10 percent compared to the previous year.

Since 2012, their number has been in constant decline. While most types of theft, such as theft without specification (down 14.6 percent) and pickpocketing (down 28.7 percent), had decreased, theft from/from vehicle (up 15.4 percent) and vehicle burglary (up 7.4 percent) had increased. E-bike thefts reported to the police had also risen sharply compared to the previous year (6082 crimes, +37.5 percent).

A large proportion (84.2 percent) revolves around cyber sexual offenses. A total of 15,714 injured parties were registered with the digital crimes. Over 50 percent of those affected were men.

In 2020, a total of 1668 serious violent crimes were reported: according to police statistics, 137 crimes or 8.9 percent more than in 2019 (1531 crimes). The increase was due in particular to the increase in attempted homicide (+45 offenses), rape (+34) and aggravated assault (+32).

Source: FSO 

Adobe warns against several critical vulnerabilities in Adobe Acrobat and Reader. The vulnerability CVE-2021-28550 allows executing malicious code on the computer and possibly spying on users' information.

All it takes is to send users a manipulated PDF. Adobe recommends users update Adobe Acrobat and Reader to the latest versions. The update 2021.001.20155, which fixes the vulnerability, is already available. ready for download.

Source: Adobe Security Bulletin

Last March, following research by the online magazine "Republik", the Federal Data Protection Commissioner initiated proceedings against the operators of the platform "meineimpfungen.ch". opens. The data protection violations were obvious and the operators were ordered to take the website offline until further notice.

As it is now on the website isThe overall assessment has now shown that it is no longer possible to operate the platform securely. However, the foundation is working on making the vaccination data available to users again.

It goes on to say that the external review showed that the platform was insufficiently protected against current security threats and that previous decisions could not be implemented. However, the operators assure that the data is isolated and secured. Users will be given the option to securely download the data or allow deletion requests, they said. The foundation board is currently looking for additional partners and funding to implement this solution.

Source: myvaccinations.ch