For about a year, the National Cyber Security Center (NCSC) has been accepting voluntary cyber incident reports. Previously, this service was offered by means of a simple form on the website, which has now been modified in terms of usability. was revised.

Deposit more information about the cyber incident

According to the federal cyber office, the focus was on user-friendliness. After answering a few questions, reporters are automatically forwarded to suggestions for further processing. Also added is the option to leave more specific information about the cyber incident. The goal is to use the collected information to quickly identify trends in incidents, create a complete cyber situation picture and take appropriate countermeasures, the NCSC writes.

In the same step was also the website revised. A subdivision into user groups according to "private", "company" and "IT specialists" has been added.

Source: NCSC

A few days after a Covid 19 vaccination, a 91-year-old person suffering from several serious previous illnesses died in a nursing home in the canton of Lucerne. Neither the medical history nor the acute course of the disease had a direct causal relationship between the Covid-19 vaccination and the death, Swissmedic wrote. The comprehensive information available would point to a natural cause of death, which was also noted accordingly on the death certificate.

So far, no unknown side effects have occurred with vaccinations against the novel coronavirus, Swissmedic said. At the present time, there are also no indications of a change in the benefit-risk profile of the vaccine used.

Source: Swissmedic

From Thursday, the Swiss Air Police will be available for deployment around the clock. Two fighter jets will circulate 24 hours a week from Dec. 31, 2020, and will be ready for action in no more than 15 minutes, according to the Swiss Armed Forces in a statement on Tuesday writes. The "Air Police Service 24" (LP 24) project could thus be implemented on schedule, according to the Defense Group.

The security project was launched on the occasion of a motion by Council of States member Hans Hess, who called for greater readiness in the air police service. As recently as 2015, the Swiss Air Force was only on duty during office hours. Since then, the air police's operational readiness has been gradually increased. In 2016, two aircraft were already on standby during 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekdays; since 2017, the aircraft have been on call 365 days a year.

15 "Hot Missions" and 290 "Live Missions

The two armed F/A-18s are mainly intended to intervene in "hot missions", for example in the case of aircraft that violate air sovereignty or seriously disregard air traffic regulations. Permanent missions ("live missions") involve random checks of state aircraft, which are only allowed to pass through Switzerland's skies with diplomatic clearance. In 2020, there were a total of 15 "hot missions" and 290 "live missions" carried out, according to the Confederation.

According to the Swiss Armed Forces, 100 additional positions were needed for the full expansion by the end of 2020. These were incurred by the air force, the logistics base, the army and the command base support. In the statement, the army also points out that in the future there could be more flight movements at ultrasonic speed outside the previously usual military flight times in order to secure the airspace around the clock.

Source: Swiss Army

It's true that hardware manufacturers are already promising numerous improved IT components such as cameras, speakers and microphones for next year. However, the whole world has upgraded its need for laptops and desktop PCs since Corona, according to Reuters to a level not seen since the iPhone launch in 2007. Acer America CEO Gregg Prendergast is quoted as saying this. According to him, the entire supply chain was very tense during the year. According to the report, some manufacturers are no longer able to keep up with production. At Acer, some corporate customers are already waiting several months for ordered hardware.

According to IDC, a global peak of around 300 million devices was reached around 2008, after which demand fell continuously to around 250 million devices per year until 2019. In the meantime, the analysts expect an increase of a good 15 percent since 2020 compared to the previous year, which should bring demand back to around 300 million. The very high buying interest for PC components is due to the Corona crisis, as more and more private users are upgrading to home offices. The tablet segment is also recording surprising growth.

According to IDC, the bottlenecks could continue until 2022.

Source: Reuters

Jumbo Markt AG is recalling two e-scooters in cooperation with the Swiss Council for Accident Prevention (BFU). We are talking about the two models "Momo" and "Maserati".

According to a statement from the Federal Office of Consumer Affairs, there are risks of fire and accidents. The affected e-scooters will be converted free of charge upon return. According to the statement, it cannot be ruled out that water could get into the battery compartment during rain, which could lead to a fire and accident hazard.

In any case, the Federal Consumer Agency advises to stop using the two models and to return them to the Jumbo stores.

Contact address at Jumbo:

Phone: +41 44 805 63 22
Mail : quality.management@jumbo.ch

Source: Federal Consumer Affairs Bureau

The Technical Committee CEN/TC 72 has developed the two current standards EN 54-5: 2017 + A1:2018, "Heat detectors - Point detectors", and 54-7: 2018, "Smoke detectors - Point smoke detectors based on the scattered light, transmitted light or ionization principle", has been harmonized. New are especially reinforced EMC resilience requirements of the products. The updated standards are to be applied from the end of the transition period to the August 31, 2022 Mandatory throughout the EU.

VdS Schadenverhütung GmbH, which supports manufacturers with regard to certificates, now also offers these certifications. According to VdS, recognized detectors have generally already met all new requirements for years.

"We want to support our partners comprehensively and in a time-optimizing manner - among other things by providing all relevant testing services from a single source. That's why we also cover these new certification requirements directly," emphasizes Ulrich Rabe, deputy head of the VdS laboratories for fire alarm technology in a statement.

Details on the new harmonized standards: www.vds.de/en54-5-7

Source: VdS Schadenverhütung GmbH

On September 4, 2020, the 15.4 km long Ceneri Base Tunnel was opened. A continuous flat railroad through the Alps thus becomes reality after 73 years. The tunnel now went into operation with the timetable change on December 13, 2020. Siemens is responsible for safety at several levels. Experts from Siemens Mobility, Smart Infrastructure and Digital Industries were among those involved. The focus was, for example, on the tunnel control system and the rail control technology, as Siemens writes in a statement.

Complex tasks and Big Data

Since then, SBB has been controlling and monitoring all rail traffic from Arth-Goldau to Chiasso via the Siemens control system at the SBB Operations Center South in Pollegio "Polecat N". However, the tasks in the field of tunnel automation are complex.

According to Siemens, overfill prevention, train tracking, spacing and automatic evacuation play an important role in rail operations. The technical infrastructure of the Siemens tunnel control system shows all the statuses of the 20 or so subsystems, for example, if a connecting door in the rescue tunnel does not close properly, the ventilation system is not powerful enough or a ceiling light is defective. In the event of an emergency, the integrated operations control system suggests the best possible decision-making steps to the personnel.

With a digital twin the operating ventilation and drainage control system was previously designed virtually on the computer. In the case of the Gotthard Base Tunnel, Siemens engineers found that analyzing error messages and faults reported to the tunnel control system was a major and time-consuming challenge. Accordingly, a web-based analysis tool was also developed for the Ceneri project, which involves around 100,000 data points.

Source: Siemens

Numerous companies are currently absolutely dependent on functioning network connections. But before IT specialists spend a long time looking for internal sources of interference, it may be worth taking a quick look at a live global map. Thousand Eyes, an Internet and cloud intelligence provider, published its "Global Internet Outages Map" this year, which shows Internet outages at a glance, for example on the basis of backbones, so that companies can quickly pinpoint what could currently be having a negative impact on customers' "user experience".

The source is said to be based on real telemetry data - the cloud provider's global data points carry out five billion measurements every day, according to its own information. This is supposed to illustrate where the data flow between ISPs and cloud operators is disrupted. The resulting macro outages are displayed on the interactive map.

Interested parties can browse the main view of the interactive live map free of charge. Customers of the company received even deeper insights on the impact on their own network infrastructure. The map is available here: www.thousandeyes.com/outages

Source: Thousand Eyes

A new variant of the coronavirus has been discovered independently in the United Kingdom and South Africa in recent days, the Federal Office of Public Health reports. By sequencing 500 people who tested positive, ETH Zurich was also able to identify the variant from South Africa as part of its research work. Meanwhile, one of the two people in the canton of Schwyz who tested positive is in quarantine. The second person is currently in France. The FOPH is already in contact with the authorities.

In the communication, the FOPH points out that all persons entering Switzerland from Great Britain or South Africa since December 14 must go into quarantine for ten days. This rule also applies to persons residing in Switzerland who return to the two countries after the festive season.

Since Dec. 24, three samples of the mutation from England have been identified in Switzerland for the first time. After the two reported cases from Zurich and Graubünden, another case of the mutation has now been added in Liechtenstein. The affected person is in isolation.

Source: BAG

Kaspersky notes a 252 percent increase in brute force attacks on remote desktop protocols (RDP), particularly in Germany, compared to the previous year. In the corporate blog Kaspersky speaks of 1.7 million unique malicious files that were disguised as apps for corporate communications.

A gateway for brute force attacks - and at the same time one of the most popular protocols on the application level - is the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) in Windows. During the first lockdown, attacks on computers made available to remote employees, some of which were incorrectly configured, increased worldwide, according to Kaspersky.

Another group, disguised as enterprise applications, were downloaders: applications that are not necessarily malicious themselves, but can download other programs, from Trojans to remote access tools. These often reloaded adware to flood victims' devices with unwanted ads or spy on their personal data.

Kaspersky lists seven tips for companies to protect their digital infrastructure:

• Employees should be allowed access to the corporate network via a corporate VPN. In addition, multi-factor authentication provides protection against RDP attacks.
• Ensure employees have everything they need to work securely in the home office and know who to contact for IT or security issues.
• Set up basic cybersecurity training to train the workforce's awareness of it. This can also be done online. The focus should be on managing accounts and passwords, endpoint security, and securing web browsing.
• Regularly update devices, software, applications and services.
• Constant access to up-to-date threat information must be ensured to support the protection solution in use.
• In addition to physical endpoints, it is important to secure cloud workloads and virtual desktop infrastructures.
• Deploy an enterprise security solution for log inspections to configure alerting rules for brute force attacks.

Source: Kaspersky

According to the FOPH, people in Switzerland should be informed "comprehensively, transparently and understandably" about the Covid 19 vaccination and its tolerability, benefits and effectiveness. The first Corona vaccinations will start in Switzerland as early as this week. The approval of the first Covid 19 vaccine by Swissmedic is an important step in the management of the pandemic in Switzerland.

Education through information campaign and medical professionals

Preparations are currently underway to ensure that vaccination can begin quickly. At the same time, the FOPH is launching a broad-based, multi-stage information campaign starting on December 24. People in Switzerland should have transparent and comprehensible information to make their vaccination decision.

The FOPH website on vaccination will be continuously updated. Information will also be disseminated via print and online media, as well as social media channels. At the beginning of January, the FOPH plans to launch an information campaign: with people from the healthcare sector who are vaccinated.

To support healthcare personnel who will be carrying out Covid 19 vaccinations, the FOPH is working with representatives of the cantons, the medical profession and other partners to develop information material and checklists. An information line is available to both the general public and health care personnel for questions about vaccination.

The information portal  www.bag-coronavirus.ch/impfung provides information on questions that arise around vaccination. For example, how the individual vaccines work, what protection a Covid 19 vaccination can offer, for whom it is suitable and where interested parties can register for a vaccination. An animated film explains mRNA technology, which has already been under research for 10 years.

Left:

bag-coronavirus.ch

www.bag-coronavirus.ch/impfung

Info poster about vaccination (PDF)

Source: BAG