Cybersecurity costs money. As long as the IT systems and infrastructure are functioning, it is often difficult to invest the resources that would be needed to reduce risks and ensure smooth operation in the future as well, in other words: to establish cyber resilience. When organizations systematically underestimate their cyber risk, it has to do with several misconceptions. In the following, we look at six of the most common misconceptions.

Assumption 1: It only affects the others anyway

"Our company is not interesting enough for a cyberattack." This assessment is anything but rare. Unfortunately, the reality is completely different. Statistics show that as many as 99% of all cases of cyber damage are the result of attacks that were not targeted at all. In other words, the vast majority of attacks are spray-and-pray. Cyber criminals launch a general attack attempt without a specific target. Then they simply wait to see which companies or organizations, for example, the email with the phishing link will lead to success. Unfortunately, for many companies, the hurdle for an initial compromise of their IT is not high enough to withstand these attacks in the long term. This plays into the attackers' hands. Especially if they have primarily financial interests and want to blackmail the company, for example by encrypting it using crypto Trojans or ransomware. This is where the spray-and-pray approach is usually the most profitable for cyber criminals. This in turn means that every company is a potential victim. Politically motivated attacks are clearly distinct from this: here, success is ultimately just a question of available manpower, as monetary cost-benefit considerations play a completely subordinate role in an ideologically motivated attack. In such cases, zero-day attacks that exploit security vulnerabilities in software that are not yet publicly known are also used more frequently. With a zero-day exploit, the attacker plays a joker, so to speak. This is because if the new attack method becomes public as a result of its use, this attack vector is ultimately used up because software manufacturers then roll out the corresponding security updates.

Assumption 2: Attacks from the supply chain do not play a major role

In fact, the number of supply chain attacks is increasing. In this class of cyber attacks, software solutions, devices or machines that are supplied to a company and that it uses for its business activities act as the attack vectors. For example, the Log4j vulnerability disclosed in December 2021 was a zero-day vulnerability in a Java logging library. Log4j is used to create and store logging information from software, applications and hardware appliances. However, because Log4j is sometimes deeply embedded in many different solutions, in thousands of instances, a simple vulnerability scan is hardly sufficient to identify all vulnerable instances. In general, even open source software is not immune to security vulnerabilities. For example, a professor at the University of Minnesota managed to introduce vulnerabilities into the Linux kernel as part of a study. He and one of his students pretended to provide bug fixes for the Linux community. The aim of the controversial action was to demonstrate how vulnerable open source projects can be. A security gap in the Linux kernel is potentially so serious because Linux is very widespread. Today, it can be found in servers and smartphones as well as in a wide variety of embedded devices - from cars to smart homes and machines. With the increasing digitalization of our economy and our living environment, networked devices can now also become a gateway for cyber criminals. For example, a supermarket chain was hacked when the attackers chose the intelligent refrigerated shelves in the stores as an attack vector. The same risk exists for networked devices in the smart home sector. They also represent potential points of attack - a serious reputational risk for the device manufacturer or distributor. In both the private and commercial sectors, a much more conscious approach to installed software and purchased devices is therefore required. In the manufacturing industry, for example, where a machine can have a life cycle of several decades, sooner or later only mitigating measures will be available to reduce security risks. This is because manufacturers no longer exist, or they no longer supply security patches after a few years. So sometimes the only option left is to seal off the machine from the rest of the network at great expense and accept the residual risk. As a general rule, it would be negligent for a company to shift the responsibility for its cyber security entirely onto its suppliers. Threats from the supply chain are real and commonplace today. Companies therefore not only need appropriate risk awareness, but also experts who can help them establish effective cyber resilience.

Assumption 3: Our employees already have sufficient safety awareness

All too often, careless behavior on the part of employees still provides cyber criminals with a convenient gateway into the company. Creating and maintaining an appropriate level of risk awareness is a building block for cyber security, the importance of which a company should never underestimate. Only if they are aware of the danger will employees consistently avoid giving out passwords over the phone, for example, or carelessly clicking on a dubious link in an email. Sometimes the potential danger is also a direct consequence of daily work. Employees in the HR department, for example, open applications almost every day without knowing whether the digital CV contains malicious code or not. The same applies to invoice PDFs in the accounting department's inbox. This is why companies naturally need to take technical measures against such attacks. But it is equally important to reduce the likelihood of successful phishing attempts by raising awareness of the dangers of social engineering attacks in general. Social engineering means that the attackers use deception to gain unauthorized data or access. Methods of human psychology are misused to manipulate employees and persuade them to transmit information or take certain actions - such as fatally clicking on the link in the phishing email or giving their password to supposed support staff on the phone.

Assumption 4: The scope of this safety check will already be sufficient

Putting a company's cyber security to the test with penetration tests is an important building block in the development of cyber resilience. However, if the scope of the pentest is too small, little is gained. This creates a supposed sense of security. A typical example is the exclusion of certain systems, such as those that are at the end of their life cycle because they will soon be shut down or replaced anyway. However, as long as they have not yet been switched off, these old systems often offer the most tempting attack vector. Another example: An FTP service is also running on the server that operates a web application to be checked, which enables the server to be completely compromised - but all services apart from the web application are excluded from the check. It also happens that a financial institution, for example, only chooses the scope of its audit to be as large as is prescribed by regulation and officially required. Here too, the result would be a deceptive false sense of security. If pentests are to be truly meaningful, they must not only focus on a section of the company's IT. Instead, they must be designed holistically. After all, the aim of a penetration test is not just to give management a positive feeling about cyber security - it should identify real security gaps and potential attack vectors so that these can be rectified before they are exploited by criminal attackers.

Assumption 5: Penetration testing can be done by the IT department on the side

In most companies, pentesting cannot be an in-house task at all. After all, IT administrators have one thing above all else to do: they have to ensure that the company's systems run reliably. As a rule, the administration team is already working at 100, if not 120 percent capacity with its operational tasks. In addition, penetration testing requires highly specialized and cutting-edge expertiseThis is something that the IT department usually does not have at its disposal. It is important that management understands that a pentest is not something that can simply be done on the side. At the same time, internal IT staff must realize that a security audit is never about discrediting their own cybersecurity work, but about strengthening it. A meaningful penetration test would not even be feasible with in-house resources because know-how and time are lacking. This is only different if the company is large enough to afford its own dedicated Red Team - the attackers - for more or less continuous pentesting. This Red team is then countered by a dedicated Blue team with the defenders. But even a dedicated Red team can sometimes benefit greatly from external support from Ethical Hackers.

Assumption 6: Our backups save us in case of emergency

Just over five years ago, this statement may have been true. Today it is no longer true, not in every case. It is important to remember that the quality of malware has increased significantly. Crypto Trojans that encrypt company data for blackmail purposes no longer do so immediately. There is now ransomware that first settles in a company's backups and gradually destroys them. Only months later, when the backup has become unusable, does the crypto Trojan then set about encrypting the company's data - and the actual blackmail begins. That is why it is important today, Backups firstly, to secure them against malware with suitable protection concepts and, secondly, to check them regularly. Only a backup that can actually be set up can be relied on in an emergency. Companies should therefore regularly test, practice and try out their disaster recovery. And if a company encrypts its backup for security reasons: This backup key itself is also a potential point of attack, because cyber criminals can of course also encrypt the company's backup key. The backup would then, in turn, be unusable, and the extortion attempt through the encryption of the company's data could begin. That's why it's important that companies keep their backup crypto keys offline and also document their disaster recovery training offline.

Conclusion: From cybersecurity to cyber resilience

The threat of cyberattacks has not diminished; on the contrary. If a company wanted to conclude from a past that went smoothly that it will continue to be safe from cybercrime in the future, this would perhaps be the most serious misconception of all. Operational reliability can only be established in IT if a company establishes, maintains and further develops its cyber resilience with suitable, holistic concepts and measures. In any case, it is worth the effort to deal with this, because the financial damage in the event of an emergency weighs many times more heavily than the foresighted investment in cyber security. As in medicine, prevention is better than cure when it comes to cybersecurity. Authors: Michael Niewöhner and Daniel Querzola are both managers and penetration testers at Ventum Consulting, Munich  

This article originally appeared on m-q.ch - https://www.m-q.ch/de/sechs-gaengige-fehlannahmen-zur-cybersecurity-im-unternehmen/

"Best Managed Companies," the competition conducted in 48 countries by Deloitte Private, compares companies in a comprehensive assessment against the consulting and accounting firm's globally recognized benchmark. This has been continuously developed in the 25 years since the Best Managed Companies Award was launched. Companies that submit to the in-depth analysis receive an independent and substantive assessment of how their operations compare to a global community of more than 1,000 exemplary managed companies in four key business areas.

Intensive evaluation process

All participating companies undergo an intensive multi-stage coaching and evaluation process. Their performance is comprehensively assessed in the areas of strategy, productivity and innovation, culture and commitment as well as governance and finance. Only those who excel in all four categories have a chance of winning the award. "This year's award-winning companies combine several elements that are particularly crucial to success these days: they are all highly agile, flexibly organized and have a clear focus on growth. They also manage not to insist on outdated traditions and still maintain their core values. The 'Best Managed Companies' award is an incentive for all decision-makers in the Swiss economy to shape the future of their companies with foresight, innovative strength and a sustainable management culture," said Andreas Bodenmann, Program Manager and Head of Deloitte Private at the gala event on 7 July 2022 at the SIX ConventionPoint in Zurich.

Best Managed Companies: Beacons of the Swiss Economy

Four traditional family-owned companies were honored as "Best Managed Companies":

• The Wipf Group is a Swiss family business that can look back on a history of more than one hundred years. It uniquely combines entrepreneurial tradition with forward-looking, innovative solutions and has thus successfully established itself throughout Europe as one of the leading suppliers of packaging solutions.
• Groupe Acrotec SA brings together independent companies in the field of micromechanics under a common "a passion for precision" philosophy and efficiently creates mutual synergies. In doing so, it smartly exploits the governance advantages from the combination of group structure and partnership.
• The SUHNER Group impressed with the leadership renewal initiated by Jürg Suhner and the successful realignment. The company impresses with a clear strategic orientation on its comprehensive competence in tools, processes and materials know-how for metal and focuses uncompromisingly on solutions for the creation of success-critical metal components for its customers.
• Precipart, founded in 1950, convinced as a family-run company with its successful and clear focus: The company offers high-tech solutions for its worldwide clientele in the medtech, aerospace and space as well as industrial markets by means of innovations and an "engineer possible" approach.

Next, two other exemplary managed companies received the "Best Managed Companies" award:

• MindMaze, which is active in the field of digital therapy, was the first mature start-up, a so-called scale-up, to receive an award. It is driving its strong growth by means of cleverly structured governance, thereby ensuring the company's agility in the long term - a strong corporate culture provides significant support in this regard.
• The competition does not end after one year either, as all companies can regularly undergo the test and contest the workshops. The beverage manufacturer Capri Sun, which is highly successful in more than 100 countries, was the first company in Switzerland to do so, and its growth strategy geared to sustainability won over the jury as an excellently managed company.

Further strengthening Switzerland as a location

"Privately owned companies are and will remain an important driver of innovation for Switzerland as a diverse and strong business location. Deloitte has been actively addressing location issues for many years. Switzerland must do everything in its power to shape regulation in key policy and specialist areas in such a way that companies have the entrepreneurial freedom they need to develop sustainably," explains Reto Savoia, CEO of Deloitte Switzerland. "Unfortunately, this freedom is being restricted time and again. This can now be seen almost every quarter with new, sometimes radical, popular initiatives or referendums against perfectly sensible laws." This year's jury consisted of Nadia Lang, CEO of the ZFV-Unternehmungen cooperative, Jens Breu, CEO of the SFS Group, Gilles Stuck, Head of Market Switzerland at Julius Baer, and Prof. Thomas Straub, Associate Professor of Strategic Management and Corporate Strategy at the University of Geneva, who advised and evaluated the participating companies. Source: Deloitte

This article originally appeared on m-q.ch - https://www.m-q.ch/de/best-managed-companies-award-exzellenz-bei-schweizer-kmu/

Just at the halfway point of the year, a word creeps into our vocabulary that couldn't be more fitting: semi. The current state of the industry? Semi. The work of industry colleagues at juries? Semi. The juniors' proposals for the next pitch? Semi! It's mainly the young people in the industry who have brought the word into circulation. When the old-timers talk about their long-gone exploits, Generation Z doesn't even roll its eyes, but looks out into the world, perplexed. What are they talking about? They find it semi-funny or semi-interesting. The prefix "semi", which as a determiner originally weakens or halves adjectives or nouns, has long since taken on a life of its own. Presumably because, without a base word, it leaves open what exactly it means. Neither outstanding nor bad. Neither innovative nor oldschool. Simply semi. It sounds more positive than "so-so" or "okay" and more engaging than "interesting", but above all much more motivating. Which brings us to the topic of Generation Z. While the "old ones" - meaning Boomers and Millennials - are used to commenting on current events from an intellectual semi-distance, Gen Zers always go all-in.

Basic motivation (self-)satisfaction

This new generation is now hitting the job market full force. In the agencies and with clients. They motivate themselves from a seemingly endless reservoir of self-confidence and presentation skills. That's why a lot of things are "semi": whether good or bad, the main thing is that it's right for you and positive. Old management principles no longer apply. Old evaluation schemes even less so. When managers are desperate to invite Generation Z experts to workshops, they usually do so out of a mixture of great perplexity and forced curiosity. If you then ask "So, how was the workshop?", the answer has recently been "semi". This is because they have not only learned a new word, but also experienced a feeling that could not be described more accurately than "semi". On the one hand, it's the enthusiasm about this incredible energy and motivation that you get from Gen-Zler:innen, and on the other, the skepticism about their self-satisfaction. "Well, it's not that innovative", is what millennials and boomers with a "semi" usually say, shrugging their shoulders and being self-protective.

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* Benno Maggi is co-founder and CEO of Partner & Partner. He has been eavesdropping on the industry for over 30 years, discovering words and terms for us that can either be used for small talk, pomposity, excitement, playing Scrabble, or just because.

The Literatur Festival Zürich, presented by Kaufleuten Kultur and Literaturhaus Zürich, will take place for the 10th time next week in the Old Botanical Garden. For the anniversary with a new design and a Web platform - conceived, designed and programmed by the agency Haeberli office.

Program, stream, store on one platform

Online festival visitors can use the platform intuitively and can buy tickets or watch the live stream with just one click. All events are now also broadcast live. The audience can therefore decide for themselves whether they want to be there live on site or via live stream.

Dip and turn

The new key visual remains deliberately ambiguous, sensual, leaves room for interpretation and is intended to symbolize immersion in new - literary - worlds. The typography and the logo play with twists and reversals. The festival becomes the hub for the new streaming offer. Every year, the festival attracts a broader audience of more or less literature-savvy people with international authors and its own music program. There are now various ways for this heterogeneous audience to experience the festival.

We spend around eight hours sitting down in our normal office routine plus our free time in the evenings. Calculated over a decade, that's simply four years of "sitting". The ergonomic LimbicChair aims to offer a way out of this static captivity. The two seat shells support the body almost weightlessly in its posture, while arms and legs can move completely freely. The LimbicChair was developed by Swiss physician and neuroscientist Dr. Patrik Künzler at MIT, among others, and is said to be a boon for the limbic system - and therefore for memory, drive and creativity. "The connection between posture and movement and well-being and performance has been proven," explains Limbic Life CEO Künzler. "The LimbicChair is the essence of this knowledge. Clearly, the communication around this innovative seat also needs to be top-notch. For the complete positioning & brand launch, we therefore found the perfect partners in the vision of CD Matthias Kadlubsky and his Salt & Water team."

The future of sitting

Just in time for the start of the first mass production of the LimbicChair, Salz & Water has launched a contemporary branding, a completely reimagined website and an emotional film to stage the seating experience. Because sitting on the LimbicChair is not just sitting. The limbic system is released, ideas and emotions flow as never before, brain and body enter an almost floating state.

Free your hands. Move your mind.

The chair is also equipped with five individually programmable movement sensors. There is a zoom and scroll function for the computer, a step counter with an analysis function for the training status as well as extended functions for VR gaming. "For us as an agency, this is an extremely exciting project. The LimbicChair stimulates the limbic system and thus connects the mind with emotions. This is precisely our daily goal," says Frédéric Praplan, Managing Partner at Salz & Water and project manager for the Limbic Life campaign "We are made to move".

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Responsible at Limbic Life: Dr. Patrik Künzler (Director & Founder), Mark van Raai (Chief Technology Officer), Patrik Westermann (Head of Sales). Responsible at Salt & Water: Matthias Kadlubsky, Frédéric Praplan, Christian Schickler (overall responsibility), Daniel Kenyon, Mihai Sovaiala (creation) Ala Ho, Raffael Gava (consulting); Alex J. Young, Jamie Carrol (CGI), Henry Gillis (web design/web development), Andrei Patrascu (web development). Responsible at Tyma Film: Yannis Petrone (Executive Producer), Sven Wedekind (Director), Tim Holder (DoP), Sarafina Beck (Cast), Sarah Gmür (H&M), Xenia Christina Salome (Styling), Kevin Prinz (PA), Sven Wedekind (Edit & Grading), SoundPassion (Music & Sounddesign).

The Lindenhof Group is one of the country's leading privately run listed hospitals. Over 140,000 patients are treated in its three hospitals every year, of which around 27,000 are inpatients. In addition to comprehensive interdisciplinary basic care, the hospital group offers a spectrum of specialized and highly specialized medicine. The range of services focuses on orthopaedics, internal medicine, visceral surgery, gynaecology, urology, neurosurgery, cardiology, angiology/vascular surgery, oncology, ENT, radiology, radiotherapy, nephrology and emergency medicine. The Group employs around 2,500 staff. "We are the quality leader in medicine and care in the canton of Bern," explains Guido Speck, CEO of the Lindenhof Group. "A position that brings with it responsibility - also towards our employees." The workload for nursing staff has also increased at the Lindenhof Group. "Despite the challenging overall situation, we have therefore decided to make a further substantial contribution to improving working conditions in the care sector," explains Guido Speck. A comprehensive package of measures is now intended to underline the Lindenhof Group's claim to leadership as a progressive and attractive employer. It is also intended to confirm the importance that the Lindenhof Group attaches to the health and well-being of its employees. In concrete terms, this means that in addition to the salary increase granted to all employees on April 1, 2022, nursing staff will receive compensation that corresponds to a reduction in weekly working hours to less than 40 hours - with the same salary. In addition to the increase in time credit for night shifts from 20 % to 30 %, nursing staff who work 24 hours a day in 3 shifts will receive an additional 7 days' vacation. Employees can also decide for themselves whether they want days off, vacations or to work fewer hours per week. This is a huge improvement that brings greater flexibility and quality of life. To further ease the burden on existing employees, the Lindenhof Group is launching a targeted campaign to attract new qualified professionals. The aim is to inspire young people to enter the nursing profession and further relieve the pressure on existing employees. "Your health is our vocation - your well-being is our obligation. This is the motto of our daily work. A guiding principle that also includes our employees," adds Raul Gutierrez, Head of HRM. "We are constantly committed to being and remaining the first choice for our employees. Out of gratitude and as a sign of appreciation for their achievements". Source and further information

This article originally appeared on m-q.ch - https://www.m-q.ch/de/lindenhofgruppe-verringert-woechentliche-arbeitszeit-auf-weniger-als-40-stunden-in-der-pflege/

The Muntagnard showroom is located in nature and presents completely biodegradable garments. With this action, the two Muntagnard founders, Dario Grünenfelder and Dario Pirovino, want to underline that it is also possible in the textile industry to act sustainably and in the spirit of the circular economy. "We are very proud of the fact that we have exclusively products in our range that we can leave in the wild without hesitation. Of course, clothing should never be disposed of in nature. In our case, however, we can ensure that the environment would not be unnecessarily burdened with our products," says Head of Brand Dario Grünenfelder. The idea of the biodegradable showroom was developed in collaboration with BrinkertLück Creatives. The Swiss-German agency specializes in communicating for brands that act in harmony with ecology, economy and social responsibility. In addition to the Legna - Romansh for wood - and Mangola - Romansh for cotton - lines, the Lana - Romansh for wool - line will also be on display.

115 people took part in the Swiss Infosec Heartbeat survey on data protection. Most of them (40%) work in the IT department of their company. However, numerous responses also came from the Legal and HR departments and from the Board of Directors/Executive Management area. The fact that data privacy is perceived as an important topic and taken seriously at board and management level gives the authors of this data privacy survey confidence and speaks in favor of a higher priority for data privacy.

Good report card in terms of internal data protection requirements

83% of the organizations that participated in the data privacy survey have an internal document with data privacy requirements. 12% do not have such a document and the remaining 5% do not know whether there are internal data protection guidelines. The existence of internal data privacy guidelines shows that the organizations are concerned with the topic of data privacy/data protection law and that the handling of data privacy is not arbitrary, but is clearly defined in relation to the company. This creates security and continuity. 66% of the organizations also employ data owners who are responsible for a specific part of the data within the organization.

Only a few companies do not yet have a privacy policy

104 of the 115 respondents, or 90%, confirm that their organization has a privacy statement (DSE). This high figure is encouraging. However, the data protection experts at Swiss Infosec AG ask themselves the question - which was not explicitly asked in the survey - whether these DSEs also cover data processing beyond the website. Experience shows that this is probably not the case everywhere. In view of the new data protection law, however, these data processing activities should be covered by the data protection declarations.

Data protection survey shows room for improvement in regular, cross-divisional data deletion

Not entirely unexpectedly, the greatest potential for optimization is in data deletion. It is true that 39% of the survey participants state that data is deleted regularly and across departments in their organization. However, in 43% of the companies, such data deletion does not take place and the remaining 8% of the respondents have no knowledge of it. Eugen Roesle, Head of Legal and Data Privacy at Swiss Infosec AG, refers in this context to the "last mile of data protection" that many companies still have to go through, even if the NDSG does not change anything in purely legal terms with regard to data deletion. Personal data that is no longer needed because it has fulfilled its purpose must already be deleted under the current law.

Consider data protection governance

A core requirement of data privacy governance is the implementation of a process that checks data privacy compliance for new projects involving personal data. 57% of the participating organizations meet this requirement, 43% do not or rather not. There is a need for action in the area of data privacy governance, especially since timely and, at best, automatic data privacy compliance checks for new projects save time and eliminate uncertainties and unpleasant surprises.

Support through specific tools/software solutions?

Organizations that rely on specific tools/software solutions in the area of data protection are underrepresented according to the survey. After all, 40% of the companies make use of such support, 60% do not (yet). Whether the size of the company or its complexity influence the decision to use tools, or whether the corresponding offerings and their tailored solutions are not sufficiently well known, remains an open question. Source: Swiss Infosec

This article originally appeared on m-q.ch - https://www.m-q.ch/de/bereichsuebergreifende-datenloeschung-datenschutz-umfrage-zeigt-luft-nach-oben/

The campaign's target group consisted of 80% men who are interested in luxury watches. In addition, geographical targeting was used to reach people who are traveling in the catchment area of the new store. Thanks to the programmatic playout of the campaign, the target group could be reached very precisely using cookieless audience targeting and environment targeting on finance & business environments. The audience targeting included people with the highest purchasing power and people in C-level positions. Thanks to the cookieless audience targeting, the reach was expanded more than is possible with conventional audience targeting segments based on cookies, particularly on mobile devices. The campaign was dynamically optimized during its runtime. The campaign budget was allocated between devices, audiences and environments in such a way that the best possible performance was achieved. This has led to a measurably strong increase in visits to the website and click-through rates that are up to 3 times higher than the benchmark.

Adaptive streaming technology

The advertising media produced specifically for the campaign by Drop8 certainly contributed to the performance. The display ads included high-quality videos in which watches from Rolex, Patek Philippe and Audemars Piguet were presented. Thanks to adaptive streaming technology, the videos in the display ads are played in 4K quality without any loading delay. "Drop8 developed a campaign strategy based on our goals and needs, which enabled us to advertise our new boutique in Zurich precisely and without wastage in high-quality environments," said Susanne Hurni, Vice President of Marketing, WatchBox Switzerland Ltd. "The team was very committed to the collaboration and was also able to contribute its extensive experience to the production of the video display formats as well as to tracking and segmentation."

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Example video advertising material

The Building Cooperative of the Federal Staff - BEP for short - pursues the purpose of maintaining healthy, environmentally friendly and affordable housing for its members. With the redesign of a uniform brand identity, the organization wants to position itself more clearly in the heterogeneous environment of housing cooperatives and offer an identification surface for its members.

The idea of community as a central element of cooperative living is reflected in the design of the new identity, as is the basic idea of "giving space," which is taken up in the arrangement of the letters in the logo and in the playful approach in other applications. The focus on living space and on residents is also reflected in the new imagery, which further supports the brand's identification potential.

A clear typography as well as the reduction of the color palette to the basic colors blue and red as well as black and white underline the simplicity and versatile applicability of the design system for the different users. Besides classic applications such as letterheads, business cards and annual reports, the digital presence of the brand as a versatile information and communication platform is in the foreground.

Thanks to the consistent use of images, colors and typography, BEP's new website presents itself in a uniform and concise manner. The strong contrasts and emotional image content convey a fresh and modern overall impression that differentiates in the market environment and creates a high level of recognition.

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Responsible at BEP: Maria Åström (Managing Director), Roland Tanner (Communications). Responsible at Branders: René Allemann (CEO, Creative Director & Founder), Marisa Güntlisberger (Director Omnichannel Experience), Thomas Hausheer (Creative Brand Technologist), Sarah Trendle (Executive Brand Designer), Micha Kumpf (Senior Brand Designer).

Before you rely on analytics for all or part of your strategic decision-making, you must first implement suitable processes. This ensures that data flows smoothly through all business departments and that its quality, accessibility, usability and security are maintained. Here are nine tips for building an effective data governance strategy.

1. check data stocks in the company

To maximize the benefits of data, stakeholders need to know how to select, collect, store and use it effectively. Take stock of all the data available in the company and identify its various sources, such as administrative systems, websites, social networks and marketing and advertising campaigns. Then define the points of friction where there is a loss of value due to poor data quality. Pay particular attention to the following points:

• Volume: The amount of data has exploded in recent years. Determine the amount of information stored in your databases to determine your data management method.
• Diversity: Data can be complex and diverse, as well as structured or unstructured, and can come from a wide range of information systems. Capture it in multiple places, centralize it, and reconcile it to comprehensively map all information.
• Speed: Rely on powerful, flexible software that incorporates machine learning. Review your infrastructure to select the most efficient tools that meet your needs and build a solid technical foundation.
• Truthfulness: Explanation errors in forms, diversity of collection points, bot actions, malicious actions, human errors, and more compromise the data foundation. There may also be biases in the analysis. Therefore, perform a diagnosis of the quality and accuracy of your data.
• Value: The data you use must be perfectly aligned with your company's business and marketing goals and add value to both the brand and your customers. Unify the data and react quickly to be on the winning side.

2. introduce a uniform data governance strategy

All departments in the organization need to be involved in data use - from senior management to team leaders to operations and field teams. The entire workforce should understand the challenges and benefits of shared, high-quality data. Consider the following to engage the entire operation in this transition:

• One-on-one or group meetings with various departments to better understand the current data situation, identify organizational requirements, and address any data governance expectations.
• Workshops with the aim of jointly developing a holistic methodological framework for data governance implementation.
• Real-world use cases in which, with the support of a number of employees, a business problem is analyzed in connection with a specific data area. In the e-commerce sector, for example, it could be errors in product packaging dimensions that lead to logistical difficulties and purchase abandonment because the customer finds delivery costs too high.

Next, set strategic goals that apply to the entire company or individual business units. Then define all the organization's performance indicators so that everyone understands their role in the governance model.

3. select a suitable data governance model

When you start a data governance project, you should not fall into the trap of answering all technical, organizational and regulatory questions at the same time. You need time for the first tangible results. Create a detailed roadmap with milestones that has been approved by stakeholders to evaluate efforts and progress to date. Also keep in mind that there are different data governance models. Choose the one that best suits your environment, your needs, your human and financial resources and your level of data maturity.

4. identification and selection of all data stakeholders

First appoint a Chief Data Officer (CDO) who is responsible for data governance throughout the company. He or she approves and prioritizes projects, manages budgets, recruits staff for the program and ensures complete documentation. Ideally, the CDO should report directly to the CEO. If your company is smaller, you can assign this role to another manager at a comparable level. Then expand the project team by assembling a multidisciplinary group with the following profiles:

• Data owner: You oversee the data in a given area and monitor the processes to ensure the collection, security, and quality of the data. They determine how data is used to solve a particular problem. For example, the marketing manager may be the data owner of customer data, or the HR manager may be the data owner of internal employee information.
• Data controller: They are the data coordinators and administrators of the central data store. They are responsible for organizing and managing all data or a specific data unit and monitor compliance with policies and regulations. They record and correct data elements, prevent duplicates and check the quality of the databases.
• Data manager: This ensures the proper lifecycle of the data by authorizing and controlling access to the data, defining technical processes to ensure data integrity, and implementing controls to secure and archive the data and the changes made to it.

5. eliminate data silos

Once you have put together your data governance project team, you can bring it together in a committee that makes strategic decisions about implementation in the various business areas. This committee approves data policies and deals with all issues relating to data management, security and quality. Also hold regular meetings with the opportunity to provide feedback. Ideally, you should opt for horizontal governance by putting data at the center of your operations and business affairs. Based on this principle, you can, for example, accelerate the breaking down of silos between direct marketing, advertising and customer service and unite CRM and media expertise and technologies within companies, brands and their agencies. Educate your employees on the benefits of collaboration and daily data sharing. Then ensure that all data useful for the execution of the projects is consolidated on a data management platform that ensures data reliability and linkage. It is important to make all teams aware of the existence of a centralized data repository. This creates a shared vision.

6. document project and resources

To successfully implement a data governance project, you need to set up standard processes and find a common language within the organization. Provide your teams with a "data folder" for this purpose: it allows you to identify the data sets, their flows, their storage and their processing methods. This makes the data accessible and understandable for all employees. The data folder consists of a business glossary with precise definitions of all terminology relating to the data in circulation. There is also a model that shows the structure of the company data and provides information on how it is stored. A data flow diagram is also included. The data folder also contains a section on the format of the various data types and provides information on their access and usage conditions.

7. ensure quality of data

Data controls most of your decisions, for example the type and timing of advertising measures or communication campaigns, the segmentation of target groups, the correction or addition of functions on a website or mobile application. You must be able to rely on the quality of the data. Poor quality data can have serious consequences for your company, such as lower revenue, traffic blocked by adblockers or overestimated conversions due to inadequate source attribution. To reduce these risks, you should be vigilant at all stages of the data lifecycle - starting at the critical moment of data collection. Any change or update to the website or tracking poses a risk to the quality of collection. Implement effective methods and tools to control and document this process. First of all, make sure that the tags in your tagging plans are implemented correctly. Check them regularly and completely, ideally with automated acceptance tests, as manual implementation not only costs a lot of time but also increases the risk of errors.

8. ensure conformity of data

Ever since the implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), companies have been aware of how important it is to protect the personal data of users on their various digital platforms. Violations not only result in sanctions, but can also damage the brand image and lead to a loss of trust among customers. You should therefore ensure on your websites and mobile applications that the consent of your visitors is obtained properly, freely and in an informed manner. To this end, you must choose a provider that has a strict data management policy and fully complies with the law.

9. democratize internal data use

The democratization of data within a company is one of the elementary components of a data governance approach. This involves making all information and resources available to employees that are required to fulfill their tasks and create value. Some measures can help with this, such as defining the use cases for this data and specifying where the data is located and how it can be accessed. Appointing data officers to help users on a day-to-day basis has also proven to be a good idea in practice. Next, you should set up a specific support program. For example, you can organize training courses and internal workshops to guide users in the operational use of the tools and in the use of data on specific topics. To encourage employees to use the data, the data team can also design dashboards for managing individual activities. Author: Adrien Guenther is Director of Analytics at Piano at the Munich location, where he has been strategically advising companies in the DACH region on the planning and implementation of digital analytics for a decade. Prior to joining AT Internet (acquired by Piano in 2021), Guenther was head of business intelligence at an advertising agency. He also has experience in search engine optimization, search engine development, as well as digital asset development, websites and online apps.

This article originally appeared on m-q.ch - https://www.m-q.ch/de/neun-tipps-wie-man-ein-effektives-data-governance-modell-aufbaut/

Vision 2022, the world's leading trade fair for machine vision, will be held at Messe Stuttgart from October 4 to 6, 2022. Every two years, the trade fair covers the complete spectrum of machine vision technology. The trade fair organizers are optimistic for this year: "The machine vision industry is developing dynamically and is becoming increasingly important. The prospects for Vision 2022 are therefore promising and expectations are high," says Roland Bleinroth, Managing Director of Messe Stuttgart. Anne Wendel from the German Engineering Federation (VDMA) underlines the development of the machine vision industry: "The robotics and automation industry, and especially the machine vision industry, is recording full order books. In 2021, a 17 percent increase in sales was recorded in the European machine vision industry according to the VDMA market survey. The forecasts for 2022 are positive despite lower expectations due to disrupted supply chains. Our forecasts predict a 5 percent increase and sales of 3.2 billion euros for the German machine vision industry. For robotics and automation as a whole, growth of 6 percent to 14.4 billion euros is anticipated. This gives us a positive outlook for the upcoming Vision 2022."

Growing number of exhibitors

Over three days, visitors from all over the world come together with start-ups and key players at the trade fair. The main focus is on the exchange and transfer of knowledge. Over 300 companies - more than last year - have already registered for Vision 2022. "The current number of registrations and reservations show how popular the industry is. Overall, we expect the number of exhibitors to grow by around 25 percent by October compared to last year," says Florian Niethammer, Head of Trade Fairs & Events at Messe Stuttgart. In addition to national and international key players, Messe Stuttgart is welcoming many new players this year. Around 17 percent of the registered companies are taking part in the trade fair for the first time. The increasing number of exhibitors is also reflected in the amount of exhibition space occupied. VISION will once again take place in the Paul Horn Hall (Hall 10) and the Alfred Kärcher Hall (Hall 8), but both halls will be around a quarter more occupied than in 2021: On 25,000 square meters, everything revolves around the topic of image processing.

High internationality of exhibitors

The high international importance of Vision 2022 is already reflected in the international share of exhibitors: After the ratio of national and international exhibitors was almost balanced in 2021, the foreign share for 2022 is currently 56 percent. The world's leading trade fair is thus once again developing in the direction of familiar structures. This year, exhibiting companies from the USA are particularly well represented, followed by Japan, China, the Netherlands and Switzerland. The positive mood of the exhibitors can be clearly heard. This is also the case for camera supplier Vieworks from South Korea. Janice Lee, Sales Manager at Vieworks: "We have been exhibiting at Vision for several years. Due to COVID-19, we were unable to attend the show in 2021. We are even more excited to be back in 2022 and meet our customers here in person, showcase our products and technologies, and learn about the latest market trends. The machine vision trade fair in Stuttgart has an unmatched international significance."

Vision 2022: Trend topics image processing

Image processing is on the rise. New trend topics are taking over the field and artificial intelligence has become indispensable. This is also the case in Stuttgart. In view of the technical developments, Florian Niethammer is convinced that Vision will offer the right solutions for countless user industries: "At Vision 2022, it will be exciting to see what new possibilities the topic of hyperspectral imaging offers, where the trend topics of AI and deep learning are heading and what new developments in the field of embedded vision and 3D will be on display." The exhibiting companies will be demonstrating the opportunities that machine vision offers for various sectors, including the medical and pharmaceutical industries, the food and beverage industry, transport technology and infrastructure, retail and retail trade, the automotive and supplier industry, mechanical and plant engineering and logistics. In addition to components, high-performance image processing systems will be presented. Among the 2022 system providers is the Swiss company Compar from Pfäffikon SZ will be represented. For Stefan Basig, Marketing & Sales Manager at Compar, the world's leading trade fair has a special significance: "For our industry, the machine vision trade fair stands for a clear vision. For three days, everything revolves around technology trends, product highlights and knowledge transfer. We have been using the platform for several years to deepen our knowledge in the field of machine vision. As a system integrator, it is particularly important for us to present refined and cost-effective systems to potential customers and to support them in selecting efficient solutions from a wide range of products. In doing so, it is not words that should convince, but the systems themselves." For more information on Vision in Stuttgart, Oct. 4-6, 2022, visit: www.vision-messe.de

This article originally appeared on m-q.ch - https://www.m-q.ch/de/vision-2022-positive-vorzeichen-fuer-die-30-ausgabe/