Daily Briefing: SG suspends green lane travel with Malaysia, Germany, South Korea for 3 months; OceanShield raises $1.1m

And SSG, DesignSingapore, Tribal Worldwide launch skills development programme for SMEs in design sector.

From HumanResourcesOnline:

Effective today, 1 February, Singapore has suspended its Reciprocal Green Lane (RGL) arrangements with Malaysia, Germany, and the Republic of Korea for a period of three months. However, travellers who have already been approved to enter Singapore under these RGLs can continue to do so.

This comes following a resurgence of COVID-19 worldwide, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on 30 January.

Moving forward, the Singapore government will continue to monitor the global situation and adjust border measures to manage the risk of importation and transmission to the community, and will review the RGL at the end of the suspension period.

Travellers are advised to visit the SafeTravel website for the most updated border measures. 

Read more here.

From e27:

OceanShield, a cybersecurity specialist firm for the maritime industry, has secured $1.1m (US$800,000) in a seed funding round from Masik Enterprise, angel investors, and grant funding.

The startup, which is based in Singapore, intends to use the funding to commercialise its solution.

“As this is a solution for the protection of vessel Operational Technology (OT), the commercialisation process is key for the company to generate awareness that this type of solution now exists,” Brian Worning, Head of Commercial at OceanShield, said.

OceanShield was founded in 2020 by Dr Dmitry Mikhaylov, a scientist, serial entrepreneur, and private-equity specialist in the deep tech industry.

The platform offers patented cybersecurity solutions to protect the OT systems of vessels, ports, as well as maritime and offshore infrastructure.

Read more here.

From HumanResourcesOnline:

SkillsFuture Singapore (SSG), DesignSingapore Council (Dsg), and global creative agency Tribal Worldwide have partnered to launch a transformational skills development programme, catering to SMEs in the design sector.

This first-of-its-kind, industry-led skills development programme, led by Tribal Worldwide (a SkillsFuture Queen Bee company) and supported by Dsg and SSG, will provide SMEs in the sector more support to build the skills and capabilities of their workforce, and be part of a learning ecosystem that will enable them to grow their businesses by investing in their talent.

In a press release, the partners said as part of this programme, the SMEs will be able to identify capability gaps, co-design training plans, and access government funding solutions to address their skills training needs.

“Against the backdrop of rapid digitalisation of customer experiences and business models, further accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a surge in demand from all areas of the economy for customer-centric services and solutions.

“This has led to a critical need for the design, marketing and technology industry to evolve their capabilities to keep pace with these developments. The introduction of this new programme for the design sector is timely during such economic uncertainty as it aims to help local design SMEs strategise and invest in the development of their own talents,” the press release noted.

Read more here.