Based on the court case of ETH Prof. Stricker the first part points out that up until now there have been no court decisions in Switzerland, which regulate the source of responsibility for links on homepages. Next, based on the decision of the district court of Zurich in the case "Stricker" we have classified the different types of links in a legal framework and assigned the responsibility for these links.

On closer inspection of current penal law it is shown that the internet does not bring about new criminal offences, but that these appear in a new manner and with new problems. Investigation often takes extensive effort and can not always be brought to completion, because of a lack of international ruling which would enable justice to be pursued over national boundaries. Furthermore, no legal action is taken against many offences because of the fear of loss of image to the person suffering damage.

A comparison of the data protection acts of Switzerland and Germany shows many similarities. In both cases there are stricter standards for federal authorities than for private matters. Two main differences can however be found in the application of the law. While Swiss law protects the data of individuals and legal bodies equally, German law only applies to the data of individuals. Swiss law also regulates any processing of personal data, while the German data protection act only regulates automated data processing.

As a help for small and medium-sized companies we have designed a checklist to examine the security of their IT environment, in which we give some information for possible improvements depending on the level of protection required. The list covers the sectors of networks and servers.