What does Swiss quality represent? No one could put it better than Johann N. Schneider-Ammann, Federal Councillor and Head of the Federal Department of Economic Affairs and Energy (EAER), in his laudatory speech for the upcoming day's event: "For me, the dimensions of quality combined are synonymous with excellence when the degree of fulfilment is high. In doing so, it must of course also be sustainable and socially responsible - and in particular open to new dimensions of quality, for example in connection with digitalisation."

New opportunities

How do you create success between digital technology, the environment and people? How does the economy deal with opportunities? How do processes and systems change? And which examples show how amazing companies create new dimensions of quality with Swiss solidity and digital innovation?

Speakers such as Dr. Joël Luc Cachelin, Wissensfabrik, will talk about opportunities and challenges for SMEs at this year's Swiss Quality Day.

You are sure to learn a lot about this in other presentations such as the one on "Intercultural Quality Management" by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Gerald Winz, Kempten University of Applied Sciences, or in practical talks on "Digital Communication" - which will be discussed by Joao Lourenco, Head of Marketing Communication Strategy, Performance & Media Planning at Swisscom (Switzerland) AG, among others.

Finally, the unconventional book author and self-proclaimed "digital therapist" Anitra Eggler will also inspire the Swiss Quality Day with novel self-management methods.

This year's Seghezzi Prize will be awarded to Prof. Dr. Martina Zölch. The day will be opened by Xaver Edelmann, President SQS, Ruedi Lustenberger, President SAQ, will close the Swiss Quality Day in the Kursaal in Bern.

Swiss Quality Day 2017, Wednesday, 10 May 2017, Kursaal Bern. Details of the programme and registration can be found at this address: www.tagderschweizerqualität.ch

More and more people are willing to provide Swiss insurance companies with specific, personalized behavioral data if it means they can benefit as a customer from more favorable rates. For example, 66 percent of the Swiss believe that they would give their car insurance company access to their personal driving data if it meant that responsible driving would be financially rewarded. And a clear 85 percent of those surveyed believe that they trust insurance companies more than Google or Facebook to handle this personal data responsibly.

These are the key findings of a survey conducted by the global brand consultancy Prophet on the topic of "How important is transparency about your insurance contracts to you?", for which 250 adults in Switzerland were questioned in February of this year.

Insurers struggle with digitalisation

Insurers, however, are still having a hard time with the digital transformation. In the opinion of many customers, insurance companies have so far failed to consistently implement the digitalization of the insurance business. 73 percent of respondents complain about the poor quality of insurers' online presences. Consumers therefore prefer to obtain information about rates and prices in the industry on comparison portals. 55 percent of the Swiss also complain that they do not have an adequate overview of their personal insurance cover.

A lot of trust in insurance

In addition to the technical aspects, it is also about a profound organizational and cultural transformation of the industry. "Those who want to survive in the future competitive environment must use the advancing digitalization in customer interaction, process integration and product offering to create a modern, consistent customer experience," is how new Prophet partner Wolfgang Jacob assesses the results of the survey. Jacob, who will in future head the "Financial Services" division for Prophet in Switzerland and Germany, previously held leading positions at Credit Suisse, Commerzbank and the Gerling Group (now HDI).

Successful insurers would take advantage of the fact that people trust them much more than Google or Facebook when it comes to data security, says insurance expert Jacob: "Young people in particular are used to having their data recorded all the time". The technical and legal possibilities for personalized rates are mostly there, he says. "The only thing that remains to be seen is which company will be the first to network the elements in a truly intelligent and customer-oriented way in order to generate a competitive advantage," says Jacob.

www.prophet.com

Why was Evolute Group AG founded this year? While the financial industry is being driven by stricter national and international regulatory efforts, new technologies are fundamentally and sustainably changing wealth management and its business models. In order to better meet the future demands of wealth management, the two specialised service providers SwissComply and Evolute have decided to merge.

The merger of the two specialists creates a unique offering for digital wealth management. On the one hand, through the specialised knowledge of SwissComply, which has been offering services for asset managers, family offices and banks in the areas of compliance, risk management, IT and back office since 2013, and on the other hand, through the unique solution of Evolute, which has developed a hitherto unique hybrid technology for customised portfolio optimisation approaches.

A technology through which man and machine are used equally with the highest possible efficiency.

Renowned top management

The new Evolute Group AG is headquartered in Zug, Switzerland, with offices in Zurich and Lviv, Ukraine, and is led by Kaspar Wohnlich as CEO. Fintech entrepreneur Michael Hartweg, former Microsoft Switzerland boss Peter A.C. Blum (Chairman of the Board of Directors) and financial expert Kathleen DeRose sit on the Board of Directors.

http://www.evolute.com

Does the management of female managers come across differently? According to current studies, it is clear that women do not want to go all the way to the top at all; they avoid rivalries. In 2015, the German evolutionary biologist Axel Meyer from the University of Konstanz summarized the studies on psychological gender differences as follows:

"Women statistically have more extensive vocabularies, better linguistic expression, more empathy, faster comprehension, better imagination, better emotion recognition, higher social sensitivity, and better fine motor skills.

Men have more pronounced aggressiveness, better spatial-visual skills, more assertiveness, can systematize better, read maps better, comprehend mental/3-D rotations better, and find contours better in a larger design." - However, the so-called Gaussian distribution curve applies here, he said. There are talented character types in both sexes.

Men rather narcissistic

Ulrich Kutschera, a world-renowned physiologist and visiting scientist at Stanford University, also confirmed this study situation in 2016: The image of narcissistic personality disorder apparently occurs in 80 percent of men. Men change their profile pictures on professional social media platforms like XING much more often.

If you let the different characteristics of the sexes go at each other unfiltered in your mind's eye, you might imagine why women are less likely to be found in top management:

The family orientation of women (which is biologically intended) certainly plays a role here. The only interesting aspect is that almost all the women you meet in various management positions fundamentally reject a statutory women's quota. Who wants to be a quota woman? That is second-class management and cannot be a qualitative solution.

Authenticity through CRM

Women and men alike must be allowed to preserve their psychological authenticity. On the other hand, an unreflected, ideologically poisoned orientation towards emancipation leads nowhere. Women do not want to represent male bosses - nor do they need men who adorn themselves with female attributes - in order to be able to make a career.

For example, today's Crew Resource Management (CRM) in commercial aviation and its transfer to the management floors opens up a scientifically based, proven, people-friendly, efficient and error-minimized set of rules for managers, with which both genders can combine their different abilities in a complex world.

"Real" teams open up new possibilities for effective, performance-oriented job sharing, even in high management positions. This is not only very beneficial for the desire to balance family and career. These "real" teams are not only highly superior to "so-called" teams in terms of performance and efficiency, they also work much less stressfully and smoothly, regardless of how the genders are distributed.

The main thing is that leaders never give up their respective positive sides.

Female pilots work with thousands of times fewer errors than other colleagues. At the same time, they are only human and no more stress-resistant than a manager in a company or a doctor in a clinic.

You can find out more about Crew Resource Management (CRM) here:

http://www.fengler.net

"Both the government and the citizens benefit noticeably from digitized information management, as it enables lean and effective processes," explains Oliver Kreth, Managing Director of Ceyoniq Technology GmbH. The basis for this is the law for the promotion of electronic administration (EGovG; e-government law), which places the authorities under obligation and is intended to legally secure and inspire digitalisation.

On the safe side with nscale eGov

With nscale eGov, users meet the requirements of the EGovG. "The solution organizes administrative processes in a way that is both citizen-oriented and has an optimal cost-benefit ratio," explains Kreth. This is made possible by an efficient and seamless process design - from the secure receipt of incoming mail to the processing of transactions in connected specialist procedures to the return of information to citizens, companies and authorities.

"nscale eGov" already supports the substitute scanning according to TR-Resiscan of the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) and the evidence-preserving and TR-ESOR 1.2-compliant long-term storage with an authority profile. With "nscale eGov", a virtual post office can be set up which, in addition to standard e-mails and scans, can also handle secure communication via signed messages, De-Mail and OSCI.

It also takes into account eIDAS-compliant trust services such as e-seals and remote signatures. The e-file is thus evolving from a classic archiving system to a basic e-file service for end-to-end administrative processes that are free of media discontinuity and, above all, trustworthy and legally binding.

Read more about the new solutions in process management - about points such as evidential archiving according to TR-ESOR or scanning according to TR-Resiscan at

www.ceyoniq.com

The disclosure platform Wikileaks accuses the US intelligence agency CIA of putting sensitive hacking targets at risk. Wikileaks published more than 8,500 documents originating from the CIA on March 7, 2017, allegedly revealing new methods of online warfare. This would be the most far-reaching release of confidential documents. Not only are international critical institutions such as Roche listed, but also previously secret cyber tools allegedly used by the CIA to obtain sensitive information.

The United States Central Intelligence Agency has not confirmed the Wikileaks allegations except for a neutral statement.

Hacker Tools

In terms of its magnitude, the publication goes far beyond the information of the US wiretapping service NSA revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden, Wikileaks said.

The material published under the title "Vault 7" provides insight into the alleged cyber espionage practices of the foreign intelligence service. In addition, the documents describe vulnerabilities of smartphones, computers and electronic devices and present hacking tools. The intelligence agency could bypass the encryption of messaging services such as WhatsApp, Telegram or Signal by hacking mobile devices and "reading" the messages or audio messages before the encryption takes effect.

In addition, the software of Samsung F-8000 televisions with built-in cameras and microphones is said to have been tapped by the CIA. In the attack with a program called "Weeping Angel", the device gives the appearance of being switched off. Instead, the TV records conversations and sends them to a CIA server.

Extremely problematic in this context: Some intelligence services consider attacks on high-ranking company representatives or companies as a form of active economic promotion.

Black market listens up

"Intelligence agencies have been actively searching for security vulnerabilities in software and hardware for years. It can also be assumed that, in addition to the research of these security vulnerabilities by the intelligence agencies themselves, there is also an active purchase of so-called high-potential exploits on the digital black market," says Tim Berghoff, G DATA Security Evangelist, about the current revelations.

The "end of the line" has not yet been reached, however; the collection of ideas that has surfaced in the documents contains even more frightening prospects that could affect prominent opinion leaders: from reading out access data to recording WLAN passwords.

Regardless of the current Wikileaks revelations, all devices connected to the Internet can provide points of attack that can be exploited not only by intelligence agencies, but also by cyber criminals. - The CIA is keeping quiet about this.

CIA operating in Europe?

According to a Wikileaks press release, Frankfurt is a starting point for the surveillance. The hackers controlled their attacks in Europe, the Middle East and Africa from the consulate general there. The information published on March 7, however, comes from the CIA headquarters in Langley (US state of Virginia), near Washington.

"We do not comment on the authenticity or content of alleged intelligence documents," a US spokesman is vaguely quoted as saying in press reports. Officially, no White House spokesperson would like to comment on this so far.

Source not confirmed

Wikileaks does not name the source of its information. The source's wish was to use the publication to spark a public debate on the question of whether the CIA was overstepping its authority. For the time being, the disclosure platform Wikileak has pre-processed the documents and censored names of CIA employees or other data (source sda).

The study by absolit shows gaps in the data protection of pharmaceutical companies. Especially the handling of customer data by pharmaceutical companies is alarming. 66 percent of the corporations demand more data from their customers than allowed when registering for the newsletter. This value is 23 percentage points above the average of all industries.

For the survey, 166 companies in the healthcare industry were examined with regard to the quality of their e-mail and newsletter marketing on the basis of more than 40 individual criteria. Mail-order pharmacies leave health insurers and pharmaceutical companies far behind. Subscribers are all too often left in the dark when it comes to the use of this data: Almost 40 percent of the companies do not indicate how and to what extent the personal information is used when subscribing to the newsletter, explains the expert.

No legally compliant imprint

Even though the so-called welcome e-mail should be an integral part of every e-mail marketing repertoire after a registration, in 36 percent of the cases this possibility for contacting is dispensed with. On the other hand, the companies that send a welcome email are very open about the labelling obligation. Accordingly, 80 percent of the companies do not have a complete and thus legally secure imprint, 40 percent even do without it completely. Thus, the companies risk expensive warnings and their reputation.

Although many companies in the healthcare sector actively engage in email marketing, the quality of it often leaves much to be desired. While mail-order pharmacies shine with a user-friendly registration process and good emails, pharmaceutical companies are among the laggards. This is mainly due to address acquisition: For half of these companies, you have to actively search for the newsletter registration on the website.

With an average of 42 percent, address acquisition is actually the industry's strength. With this value, it can easily compete with banks or energy suppliers and is even just behind the mail order business.

However, it is alarming that almost 30 percent of the companies surveyed are still waiting more than three months after successfully acquiring customers' addresses before sending out their newsletters.

Further details on the study can be found at www.pharmastudie.de

"Management by Farce"? What actually happened to the good management approaches "Change", "Management by Objectives" and the "insights of psychology"? Despite the multiplication of information through digitalization and the ever new possibilities of education, most managers have not necessarily become smarter. Rather, they are pushing the limits of what is commonly called thinking.

"Formerly valid virtues, role models and recipes for success degenerate into farce, because the boundaries between stupidity and malice and naivety are fluid," it says at one point to the present book description. Of course, every editor is skeptical about the expressive title of the book.

However, Kurt Steffenhagen has been a systemic coach, trainer and speaker for 25 years. After studying law and social sciences, he worked as a supervisor in individual and group settings and as a coach in business. There he accompanied managers in middle and top management. One of his passions are biting management columns, which are very popular.

Kurt Steffenhagen: "Management by Farce. The subtle difference between leadership and cooking eggs" (BusinessVillage GmbH)

http://www.businessvillage.de

Limiting the role of the Chief Data Officer to profit maximization falls short. The position of the CDO is essentially designed to achieve three key business objectives:

• drive comprehensive company growth
• improve the efficiency of measures
• manage risks

The idea is that all business processes and activities benefit from these three objectives. Jeffrey McMillan , CDO at Morgan Stanley, made some recommendations on this at the recent CDO Summit in New York. He focuses on five analysis aspects or strategic processes with regard to the handling of data.

1. The data science strategy should be consistent with the corporate strategy

Good data scientists are not easy to find. But rather than spending too much time trying to find the ideal data scientist, McMillan believes something else is at least as important. Namely, that this person is savvy when it comes to business and sales issues. If no one in the company takes care to implement the CDO's recommendations, it undermines his or her position.

2. Encourage users to work with data visualizations

Data sets should be made available to as many employees as possible instead of leaving them in the hands of a few. For McMillan, this approach secures vital corporate interests because it brings the data to the decision makers. "Corporate decision makers don't need algorithms. What they need is information they can use in practice."

3. The framework for action

McMillan has developed a process that makes it much easier to make decisions. He refers to this framework as the "next-best action framework." This refers to a system that learns, evolves, and adapts in real time. McMillan describes this process as follows: "Every single detail, about what an employee is doing or can do in their area of activity, is recorded into this system. This data is then compared with the employee's own expectations, historical behavior, customer behavior, market conditions, and about 400 other factors. We then successively optimise the system with regard to the specific needs of the client and the employee in question. This process produces a whole range of ideas that are evaluated and ranked according to a point system. For example, whether it's better to call a customer about a bad check or rather to invite them to a golf outing. And then we watch what the customer does."

4. Help digital intelligence make a breakthrough

When we talk about artificial intelligence, the business value is in what is in "intelligence". That's why McMillan prefers the term "digital intelligence." "We are digitizing human understanding in a way that adds value. Ultimately, the winners will not be those who merely provide a technology. It will be the companies and institutions that have knowledge. Those who have knowledge and information will prevail in this field. Someone has to "tell" a machine, or an algorithm, exactly where to start. A machine doesn't learn on its own."

However complex the subject matter, McMillan exhorts his listeners to make everything as simple as possible. "Rest assured, in the end, no one cares how difficult it may have been to make it that simple: Only whether it's simple."

5. Opt for a holistic approach

McMillan issues a stark warning: If you don't take a holistic approach to data management, the effort will either fail or fall far short of the results a company expects. The focus should be on the most important strategic aspects of the company.

http://www.morganstanleyfa.com

The present Federal Council report deals with qualitative proposals that do not correspond per se to price regulations. The report shows that the restriction of the free choice of doctor for patients as well as the control via different prices for the same service can lead to disadvantages in the Swiss healthcare market. For this reason, the Federal Council is orienting itself towards the working models of service providers: doctors also increasingly want to work part-time, which is why full-time equivalents should be taken into account. The task now is to continue to gear the licensing of doctors after 2019 even more consistently to patient safety.

Quality criteria of the FMH

At the beginning of March 2017, the Federal Council provided information for the first time on the succession plan for doctors in Switzerland. The current practice has proven its worth: Currently, doctors must have worked for at least three years at a Swiss-recognised postgraduate training institution in order to work as a freelance doctor.

The FMH demands that the following four demonstrably effective quality criteria must be fulfilled cumulatively in order for doctors to be licensed:

• Language competence: Doctors must demonstrate the language competence required in their region of practice in a language examination taken in Switzerland.
• Duration of training: The study of human medicine comprises six years of full-time study or at least 5,500 hours of theoretical and practical instruction.
• Further training: Doctors must have worked as clinical doctors for at least three years at a recognised training centre in the specialist discipline applied for admission with a workload of at least 80%. In the case of a smaller workload, the required clinical activity is extended accordingly.
• Proof of continuing education: After acquiring the title of continuing education (specialist), physicians must continue their education throughout their entire professional life. Continuing education can be demanded periodically in all 46 specialties and is thus a clearly verifiable and easily verifiable quality criterion.

From the point of view of the FMH, patient safety must be guaranteed at all costs. A new licensing regulation must take into account the fact that a large proportion of doctors wishing to work in Switzerland come from abroad. At the same time, admission criteria must also guarantee high-quality medical care by young Swiss doctors.

www.fmh.ch

Operating system developers can decide exactly what data to store in a backup. However, with many instant messenger applications, neither conversations nor individual messages are ever stored in the cloud or in local backups. Even downloaded emails are not kept in a backup. So extracting such messages is only possible via a physical capture like Jailbreak. However, such specialized software is not always a given. However, extracting iOS notifications provides forensic analysts with valuable insights into a user's daily activities.

In the sphere of push information

Google Trips, Booking, and Expedia apps display upcoming travel events, while Skype, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and many other apps send push notifications about recent activity such as comments, likes, friend requests, or retweets. Meanwhile, many iOS apps use push notifications to deliver time-sensitive, text-based information to the user.

Push notifications are used by apps such as email clients, instant messengers, two-factor authentication apps, and travel apps for booking airline tickets, hotels, or taxis. The app Uber, for example, just like many local taxi services, uses such notifications to inform the user of the taxi's arrival, often with the exact time and location and sometimes even the car's license plate number. Similarly, banks send real-time information about credit transactions and account updates in the form of push notifications rather than SMS messages.

It's not uncommon for banking apps to send sign-in confirmation codes to customers via the notification feature.

Highly sensitive information

Shopping apps, such as Amazon, use push notifications to communicate information about the delivery status of shipments. Such ephemeral, real-time information is often overlooked by investigators, even though it can play a significant role in investigations. But if iOS notifications are not read or deleted by the user, they are automatically stored in local and cloud backups. Once backed up, notifications can be kept in the cloud or in newly created local backups for years. Examining one particularly old account, ElcomSoft researchers were able to extract no fewer than 1,200 notifications from 2012 to 2017.

Elcomsoft Phone Viewer 3.30

"Notifications are an essential part of mobile operating systems and can contain large amounts of highly sensitive information," said Vladimir Katalov, CEO of ElcomSoft. "They are automatically stored in iCloud and local backups and can be viewed with Elcomsoft Phone Viewer 3.30. This data is of particular importance to investigators because it is no longer stored in any other place and can only be viewed in this way."

Elcomsoft Phone Viewer 3.30 can automatically identify notifications in iOS backups and displays their full content along with metadata (date, time, app package name).

The software is available for Windows PC and Mac. It runs on both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows 7, 8, 8.1, and 10, as well as Windows 2008, 2012, and 2016 server operating systems, and supports macOS 10.8 and later. EPV works without installing iTunes or BlackBerry Desktop software.

Elcomsoft Phone Viewer 3.30 is available now. The standard edition is already available for 79 Euro. Local prices may vary.

www.elcomsoft.de

When doctors or lab workers encounter viruses with their wearable early warning system, their fingertips light up brightly. Otherwise, the intelligent gloves resemble the thin latex gloves that housewives put on when cleaning windows and the like.

The MIT researchers have made several types of gloves. One version is made of latex. Only the fingertips are covered by living material. Bandages that detect changes in the skin are also feasible.

Elastic phosphorescent hydrogel

First, the MIT scientists made a film with four channels into which they filled microorganisms that lit up green when they came into contact with a certain chemical. Finally, they transferred the bacteria-filled film to a glove. They doped each fingertip with a different type of bacteria, creating a sensor for various pollutants and pathogens.

A team of practitioners then set about locating the manipulated microorganisms in the material. They opened the finest channels in the material into which the cells diffused. Finally, it ended up in a nutrient solution that was absorbed by the hydrogel. The solution is a hydrogel that consists of 95 percent water, but is still as flexible and tear-resistant as a latex glove.

According to the researchers, the custom-made device is made of "living material," an elastic hydrogel into which they have imprisoned genetically engineered microorganisms.

These have two abilities at once: When they detect pollutants, they begin to phosphoresce. The hydrogel can be loaded with engineered bacteria that react to different pollutants and pathogens, says Timothy Lu, a lecturer in biological, computer and engineering sciences at MIT.

In a way, it is a portable early warning system. Until now, such manipulated microorganisms as the bacterium Escherichia coli have only been cultivated in Petri dishes in the laboratory.

regulate humidity  

The MIT researchers' task was to ensure that the bacteria find moisture and nutrients in the hydrogel skin. Some of them also need oxygen. At the same time, the experts had to prevent the microorganisms from escaping. Some researchers use freeze-dried microorganisms that they fix in paper strips. But their sensitivity to pollutants is far lower than that of living cells.

http://web.mit.edu/