Cloud security does not have to be a complicated topic. This service includes protection of critical information against theft, data leakage and deletion. It is important to have a provider that offers a wide variety of services that meets various requirements and that provides benefits, such as knowing where the data is stored, who can access it, continuous monitoring, among others, so the company can feel more secure and can focus more in business. In this article, we are going to focus on PCI Compliance in Cloud companies, but first let's clarify what PCI Compliance is. When we work with even more important data such as bank cards, the demands are even stronger and it is essential that our project be “PCI-compliance” (Payment Card Industry Compliance). For businesses that want to be able to process payment card information, the Payment Card Industry Data Security (PCI DSS) standard is the pattern to follow. It is the only security standard accepted by all major credit card companies and helps establish a solid foundation of security for payment card transactions, it was created by American Express, Discover Financial Services, JCB International, Master Card Worldwide and VISA Inc. When we refer to PCI Compliance in Cloud companies, we are talking about the standard that companies that sell products over the internet or that require monetary exchanges in their applications, such as banks and e-commerce, among others, should mainly use. Innovation in the cloud enables a wide range of companies to access a secure and cost-effective means to protect sensitive card payment data. However, there are many questions regarding which PCI DSS requirements are the responsibility of the Client and which are the responsibility of the Provider. One of the guarantees for cloud security to be effective is the combination of provider and customer security efforts, in order to satisfy both needs, from the most basic to the most demanding, such as PCI-DSS, HIPAA, FINRA and other legal and industry requirements. Cloud computing is a growing industry that provides companies around the world with convenient access to business-class infrastructure and resources. Therefore, banks, utilities, and contact centers in particular face the increasing challenge of enabling online card payments, while ensuring that customer data is secure. Also, when it comes to using cloud services, there are some specific steps you will need to take to comply with PCI DSS. First, you'll need to audit where the card's data is stored and transmitted. Regardless of your policy, users may enter card numbers into cloud services as part of their normal workflow, and they will need to enforce data loss prevention policies for data transmitted to the cloud. Also, since only 2.9% of services apply strong passwords, you will likely need a single sign-on solution to require strong passwords for the cloud applications your employees use. Key rotation is when you remove an encryption key and replace it with a new encryption key. This helps you meet industry standards and follow crypto best practices. At Teracloud, we offer the cloud security service and we help companies design security architectures, detect and fix vulnerabilities, establish vulnerability detection processes and much more so that they are PCI Compliance. In this way, security is crucial to the design and operation of scalable systems in production, as it plays an important role in service quality, performance, and availability.

Since the internet phenomenon, the business world has not seen a transformation of such an impact as the Cloud. This revolution offers companies great cost savings, both at the IT and maintenance levels, helping them expand worldwide. The technology that offers cloud computing is the perfect way to get the best business applications up and running, quickly and efficiently. In addition, there is a growing adoption of the cloud as the main infrastructure platform to provide solutions that involve lower risk and meet the needs of different business areas. Companies should no longer be afraid of adopting this technology. There are many big corporations that provide such services around the world, which are at the forefront of innovation and have a clear idea of the business, for example, Amazon Web Services (AWS). Achieving quality providers and a cloud model that fits each organization and need, whether big or small, it is essential. As an AWS Select Consulting Partner, in Teracloud we are specialists in helping Startups around the world embrace the benefits of this technology. In this way, it helps a lot to find new business models, management and to undertake new market niches. It enables enterprises to deliver commercial services over the network through software cloud storage, infrastructure, files, and data that will be used by suppliers, customers, distributors, that is to say, by all agents involved in the business process. Indeed, companies that bet on cloud computing benefit from radical optimization in time management, cost reduction, automation and can scale their organizations efficiently removing barriers and expanding relationships around the world. This is another step towards globalizing business activities. In the era of “Big data”, companies manage a lot of information that would be virtually impossible to store in its entirety on a computer or external memory, unless an extension was performed on the system from time to time. This expands costs, in addition to not being exempt from possible failures in the computer that destroys the data. Using the space in the cloud, if the computer disk stops working, it would not affect the stored information, which will remain in the cloud and will be fully accessible from any other device. Having said that, we want to show you some of the advantages of cloud services: The main advantage for SMEs, if implemented in a public or hybrid cloud, is that they can access IT services that until recently only large companies could afford due to the cost of implementation and maintenance that they supposed. The cloud democratized access to new technologies. In addition to this, mobility is increasingly important for any professional. Being able to connect from anywhere and through any device, is a fundamental advantage since it allows flexible routines and working schedules. Remote work made it easier for teams to connect offshored: more and more companies have employees located in different cities of the world working together on the same project. The digital transformation of a business is an important process with many benefits, and migrating to the cloud is the first step. The adoption of the cloud is becoming a reality, as shown by the predictions of the US company that conducts IT research and analysis "Gartner", who said that by 2025 80% of companies will have migrated their data and services from your data centers to the cloud.

Many of us always wanted to work from home without having to move around a lot. The truth is that it is overwhelming having to walk from one place to the other, taking public transport, getting in the car and enduring the exhausting city traffic. We always imagined how nice it would be to work in the comfort of our home, with homemade food and hot coffee around the clock. Well, this dream came true for many, but at what cost? For the last few days, our entire context and lives have changed. We have been sent to isolation and #StayHome is the new hashtag that is exploding social networks. A virus named Covid-19 sprung worldwide, impacting radically our countries, cities, and neighborhoods, and even more radically, our day-to-day lives. The truth is that even the smallest of organizations are sending their employees to work from home. Mandatory remote work will accompany us at least until the Covid-19 starts to slow down. Total chaos? Is this really going to drive us crazy? In the face of crisis, human beings are supposed to be adaptive. In fact, we have always lived in a volatile, uncertain, changing and ambiguous world. The numbers of infected people and deaths increase every day and, apparently, many people have not yet understood that the only way to prevent this scaling further to stay at home. Somehow coronavirus is testing our system, as the world has never been prepared for an event of this magnitude. Preventive and compulsory isolation made us change habits and accelerated the pace at which we incorporate a different working method: “home office”. This practice has been implemented increasingly by large corporations and service companies mainly for two reasons: because new technologies allow this to be possible, and because companies have discovered that it can help them achieve greater productivity. This pandemic has only strengthened this trend. While in this context it is difficult to talk about productivity, as we are invaded by uncertainty and anguish, both employees and employers are discovering that working from home is possible and beneficial. No good opportunity comes without a cost. Hence, employees must understand that with the flexibility that comes with “home office” there is also an increase in responsibility and trust levels expected from them by their employers. In life, everything we live is a mirror of what we need to learn. Covid-19 and its effects on “home office” dynamics could not be an exception. In Teracloud we decided to talk about this phenomenon. We have agreed that this too will make us stronger as a team. First, we are taking great care of our teams in the process, constantly checking in to understand their dynamics and how they are coping with all the changes. "It is more productive at times. The good and bad thing, in turn, is that I hang around with something and while I take a bite I keep working; or not having to run to go look for my son at school (as usually happens in the office)”, said Lucas, one of our DevOps. Second, now there are fortunately a wide variety of tools and services available to help employees effectively carry out their duties from home. One of the crucial components to this is maintaining communication with colleagues. For example, at Teracloud we use Slack. We find it is the best service available to keep in touch with everyone when you work remotely. In addition, in this context companies must give freedom to employees, in terms of time and access to information for example. This means companies must be able to implement safety measures to cope with this requirement; this becomes a challenge. Most companies will have to update or invest at this point. Luckily, “cloud service providers and undergoing thorough tests. […] the world’s leading cloud providers are testing their infrastructure and activating various resilience testing procedures,” according to Infoworld. AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure have also taken steps in this regard. First, they have taken steps toward its resilience planning and growing scales of users at a given time as a pandemic response. This allows them to manage spikes in demand, similar to those that occur during Black Friday. AWS has incorporated policies and procedures around disaster recovery planning, and has taken steps to ensure continuity of service and ample capacity for its users. As the world is fighting a battle to overcome Covid-19, everyone’s emotional balance is challenged too: “On the one hand, home office is good; there is no need to run around for the schedules. It is much more comfortable. But I miss the dynamics, the talks, the shared moments, the silences, the environment (the chair, the extra monitor, my bottle of water). I particularly like working in the office, I feel more comfortable there”, shared Lu, Teracloud´s DevSecOps. Learning from chaos is crucial, and hopefully a healthier balance will come from this odyssey both for employees as for employers. At this point, the pandemic offers at the very least a powerful case study on different work dynamics, to mention one. At Teracloud we have activated an emergency protocol thanks to Covid-19. We know these are temporary measures, and we try to remain positive in what will come. Yet, our pledge is to continue to be responsible and be there for our team. We understand that coexisting 24/7 with partners, children, family, and friends, can be difficult. Generating common ground-rules, agreeing on schedules, and giving each other love and encouragement to stay calm. It is key to remember we are not locked up; we are merely taking care of ourselves and our loved ones. If you want to work at Teracloud.io, send us your CV talents@teracloud.io Liliana Medina Community Manager Teracloud.io If you want to know more, email to our team member ben@teracloud.io. #COVID19 #coronavirus #WFH #StayHome #StayAtHome #YoMeQuedoEnCasa

This December 3rd, Teracloud´s CTO Damián Olguín will be speaking at the First Spanish Language Session of Re:Invent, the most important international conference on Cloud Computing. Damián will be talking about how we build CI/ CD pipelines in the GitOps era at Teracloud.io. AWS Re:Invent 2019, taking place from December 2 – 6 in Las Vegas, will have the presence of Andy Jassy, CEO of AWS, Werner Vogels, CTO of Amazon.com, and many other personalities of the cloud computing community. It´s a great opportunity to boost personal proficiency in core AWS services like Amazon EC2, Amazon S3, Amazon RDS, Amazon Redshift, and Amazon Aurora; get educated on technical best practices at over 2,500 breakout sessions on topics such as cloud architecture, continuous deployment, security and identity, large-scale migrations, machine learning, and more. And also gain valuable hands-on experience at day-long technical bootcamps, self-paced labs, two-hour workshops, and hackathons, which I can bring back to my team. Save the date! Meet Damián on December 3rd 2:30pm (PST) at Venetian, Level 2, AWS Village Theater - Expo Hall. Find the session DEM117 in the event catalog. For more info, click oficial site of AWS Re:Invent 2019. Victoria Vélez Funes Community Manager Teracloud.io If you want to know more, email our team member ben@teracloud.io. #AWSReInvent #ReInvent #ReInvent2019 #GitOps #DevOps #devops #DevSecOps #CICD #Modernplicaction #CloudComputing #Pipeline #Build #Deploy #ConfigurationManagment #AWS #AWSLatam

The remote access login is the barrier that intruders must break in order to steal information. Several options have tried to help us in the prevention of intrusions. However, there is a reality: our physical device, while providing availability, is vulnerable to possible attacks due to its permanent connection to the net. Even the preservation and administration of private keys bring inconveniences related to physical devices or human errors. AWS brings the evolution, with Session Manager you have : Identity and Access Management (IAM) for authentication and authorization. A safe remote login through the group's policies, granting access only to the right users, validated by MFA. The ability to run commands on instances without opening any TCP port, No needs to know which IP has your EC2, you can use EC2 tags, PrivateLink solution, perfect for instances without direct internet access. Simpler networking infrastructure and, at the same time, less security risk An inventory and a store of the parameters you need to periodically check. The ability to restrict which commands users can run. The tracking of every command executed in the instances and its store at CloudWatch or S3 Logs A record of the actions taken over your resources: almost ready material to document your processes before auditories. To access Session Manager, you must take in care the following pre-requisites: SSM Agent, version 2.3.68.0 or later, must be installed on the instances you want to connect to, Ubuntu and Amazon Linux 2 AMIs already have it installed. Create an IAM Instance Profile with Session Manager Permissions: Create an instance profile for Systems Manager by attaching AmazonEC2RoleforSSM policy to a new role or to a role you have already created. In the AWS Console, you must: Go to Services and select Systems Manager in the Management & Governance section In the left side pane, select Session Manager Then, select the Start session and a list of the instances that fulfill the pre-requisites will be displayed. Select the desired instance you want to connect to and click Start session A new tab will open with the virtual shell And voila! you are ready to work remotely in a safe environment. Now you can create groups of resources, ordering them logically, by application, environment or by layer. You can define policies with the actions or commands you want to run, like patching or updating, saving the time of manual configurations. And finally, you have the certainty that the policy you wanted to implement has been followed with a record of the actions taken and who take it. In case something goes wrong or you have to face an auditory, all the information requested is just there. Lourdes Dorado DevOps Engineer Teracloud.io If you want to know how SSM can help to better manage your infrastructure and give you an extra layer of security, email to our team member info@teracloud.io. #cybersecurity #cloudsecurity #DevSecOps #DevOps #devops #devsecops #sessionmanager #SSM #SSH

Given the global nature of Teracloud’s customers, we often need to learn new tricks or adapt our practices to different geographical locations. For the last several weeks I have been working for a client who has an application in AWS Cloud with users in both, USA and China. The process of setting up the infrastructure to provide an excellent user experience in both locations was challenging. This article aims to share my experience in this tricky endeavour. You may wonder what is the difference between AWS China and the rest of the regions. To begin you cannot find AWS China in http://console.aws.amazon.com/ as a region that you can switch to. AWS China is completely separated from AWS global: there is no way to connect resources directly between AWS global and AWS China, even China’s IAM is separated from IAM global. AWS China has two regions: Beijing (with 2 availability zones) operated by Sinnet, and Ningxia (with three availability zones), operated by NWCD. Amazon Web Services has collaborated with Chinese local partners to comply with China’s regulatory and legal requirements that they couldn’t satisfy on its own. Let's see some of the main differences between AWS Global and AWS China: There is no direct connection between AWS China regions and AWS global. AWS China has its own domain. The amount of service available in China is smaller compared to other regions. For example, at the time this publication was written, Fargate, EKS, EFS, AWS Secrets Manager, and many more are not available in AWS China. The user accounts of AWS China are different from AWS global because are in a completely separated infrastructure. AWS China has no access to global Route53 service. Despite these differences, we still need to work with AWS China to service Chinese customers. So, as with any other service, it begins creating an account but it does not end here: your identity must be verified by the Chinese government before you may get access to AWS China Regions. Companies need to provide a valid Chinese business license called ICP license. Moreover, depending on the business you are operating in China, there might be others requirements. At this point, you may say “Why should I bother? I can deploy in Singapore Region and have similar latency” and you will be right. But you are still on the wrong side of the Great Firewall of China. All traffic that enters and leaves mainland China must pass through the Great Firewall. There are only three entry points on the Chinese Firewall. All traffic entering and leaving it is monitored by the government. Because of this, often there is congestion and packet loss, resulting in a poor user experience for our valuable Chinese customers. You not only need to comply with Chinese regulations, but you also have to make major changes to your infrastructure configuration and your architecture to adapt to AWS China. Do you want to learn more about AWS China's best practices? Contact us so we can assess your business and find out exactly which AWS service is right for your journey when expanding your business east. Santiago Zurletti DevOps Engineer Teracloud.io

How often do you stop to think about the safety of your development tools? Even when these don't intentionally include malicious code, they often use libraries or modules with vulnerabilities. Either because they are linked against old or just plain deprecated versions, or even recent versions with recently discovered flaws that opened a point of attack. Moreover, if your tools are just packed with some bad configurations or too open implementation rules (such as port exposure), you are exposed to security problems, even serious ones. You can unconsciously have been working with outdated, vulnerable Javascript libraries. How can we protect us and our deliverables, and do it in a manner that does not negatively impact our release pipeline complexity, our production lifecycle length or our development costs? The ideal solution should be completely automated. And it also needs to have bleeding edge information, so you are protected from the most recent and dangerous threats. And of course, it needs to be easily integrable with your delivery pipeline. And the icing of the cake would be that the same tool offers solutions or workarouds for found threats. Our proposal is not only to eliminate the time invested in looking for which-component-depends-on-which-vulnerable-library, but also to save the time referred to the search for a solution. We integrate our tool into your delivery pipeline, ideally at the early stages of your project, and create an alert-response mechanism using Slack channels to keep the information flowing at top speed and to the right people. And to really excel on the ideal situation proposed above, we also add a constant monitoring process, which in the event of a positive detection -in your library and tool sets, or on related technologies- alerts you and your team and helps you take corrective actions. At Teracloud we strive to help companies to embrace a security-first culture, understanding that automated monitoring and experienced people are the key to guarantee that "hidden defects" unknown to the developers are found, and to obtain consistent and secure products for your customers. Lourdes Dorado DevSecOps Engineer Teracloud.io If you feel that this blogpost represents your actual needs, concerns or you just want to know more, email to our team member ben@teracloud.io.

A couple of months ago we heard about Docker and vulnerabilities found on some of their images. It’s easy to imagine what could happen if one of our applications would be running on one of those images. Sometimes the inexperience or the times to deliver decide us to use one of the images available on the docker’s site, but do we really know what are we using? Sometimes It's reduced to a faith thing. But having the right tools we could forget about that kind of issue, or at least, we could have a way to detect if our image has suffered a leak or it’s exposing us to vulnerability. DevSecOps is the natural extension of DevOps and Agile cultures to incorporate Security as a main concern. Its essential goal can be defined as "Incorporate security awareness in the whole value delivery pipeline, from ideation to implementation to delivery and monitoring". As with DevOps and Agile movements, this goal is interpreted and implemented as lean as possible, minimizing bureaucracy and maximizing delivered value to the clients. While our world becomes more and more information-based, the security of our customer's information is increasingly more valuable. How we take care of our customers' information can be a competitive advantage or take us out of business (see this article). CEOs and founders are eager to pay 20% more AND change providers if grant a higher level of cyber-security, according to a very recent study by Continuum. According to this Cybersecurity Ventures report, a ransomware attack will be carried out on a company every 14 seconds in 2019 which represents an economic cost of almost 11.5 billion dollars for the companies. DevSecOps efforts are guided to unite application development, IT operations, and security teams in the endeavor of determining possible vulnerabilities not only over the application and the data but also over the infrastructure. It works in this way through its core principles, as defined by https://www.devsecops.com: Leaning in over Always Saying “No”. Data & Security Science over Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. Open Contribution & Collaboration over Security-Only Requirements. Consumable Security Services with APIs over Mandated - Security Controls & Paperwork. Business Driven Security Scores over Rubber Stamp Security. Red & Blue Team Exploit Testing over Relying on Scans & Theoretical Vulnerabilities. 24x7 Proactive Security Monitoring over Reacting after being Informed of an Incident. Shared Threat Intelligence over Keeping Info to Ourselves. Compliance Operations over Clipboards & Checklists. This list has different principles, some oriented to implementation (like principles 4, 6, and 7), organizational principles (like 3m 8, and 9), and "human" principles like 1 and 2. From this author's point of view, this means a mature understanding of the challenges we need to face, something beyond Agile, which defines its principles at a much less practical level. To understand how DevSecOps should be implemented over a value delivery pipeline we will explore the DevSecOps best practices within an organization: Ease code analysis: deliver code in small chunks so vulnerabilities can be identified quickly. Change management: increase speed and efficiency by allowing anyone to submit changes, and determine whether the change is good or bad afterward. Compliance monitoring: be ready for an audit at any time, which means being in a constant state of compliance including gathering evidence of GDPR compliance, PCI compliance, etc. Threat investigation: identify potential emerging threats with each code update and be prepared to respond quickly. Vulnerability assessment: identify new vulnerabilities with code analysis, then analyze how quickly they are being responded to and patched. Security training: train software and IT engineers with guidelines for setting security routines. As with DevOps, selling the value of DevSecOps to the stakeholders could be hard at the beginning, and getting the budget to change the organization to pursue these goals will be difficult. Your best chance is to have a good plan in place, an experienced team, and your costs under control. At Teracloud we work around the clock to give exactly that to our beloved clients. Contact us at info@teracloud.io we can help you! Lourdes Dorado DevOps Engineer Teracloud.io If you feel that this blog post represents your actual needs, and concerns or you'd like to know more, email our team member info@teracloud.io. #devops #DevSecOps #Security #Cloud #docker #bestpractices #AWS #cybersecurity

How do you know if a company is living at the AWS's Valhalla? When the CTO is giving a talk right next to Amazon's CTO on a AWS-sponsored event. At Teracloud we are very excited to announce that our CTO and Co-Founder, Damián Gitto Olguín, will be a speaker in the upcoming AWS Community Day held at Buenos Aires on June 18, where the opening keynote speaker will be Werner Vogels, Amazon's CTO. Damian's talk will be "Automation as a code: From zero to ECS in minutes", where he leverages all the experience we have gain at Teracloud for the last couple of years automating and securing infrastructure for more than 200 customers worldwide. Why would you want to be in this event? Well, in short you will be able to: - See what the rest of the AWS user community has been up to. - Share what you have learned with them. - Network with your peers to establish new relationships and strengthen old ones. - Ask what you always wanted to know about AWS and Amazon. - Have some Amazonian fun(tm). This year we will meet at the gorgeous Four Seasons Hotel in the city of Buenos Aires. You can check out all the talks and activities here, and you can book tickets free of charge at this link . If you need further guidance or more information about the event, please write us to info@teracloud.io. It will be AWSome to meet you there! If you feel that this blogpost represents your actual needs, concerns or you just want to know more, email me at ben@teracloud.io. #aws #wernervogels #cto #teracloud #awscommunityday #awsbuenosaires #Automation #ECS #Communityday

Think for a moment that: 60 percent of small and midsize businesses (SMBs) affected by some sort of data leak go out of business within 6 months. 62 percent of CEOs of SMBs said that their firms don't have an up-to-date or active cyber-security strategy--or any strategy at all Cyber-attacks to SMBs increased 420% is the 2017-2018 period. Two-thirds of SMBs have suffered a cyber attack in the past 12 months The chances are even higher if your business has a strong online presence. The costs will also be higher, which means that the likelihood you will suffer unrecoverable financial losses (bankrupcy) increase as well. We are aware of this devastating risk since a long time ago (see this Huffington Post article from 2013 if you don't believe me) Why If we quickly analyze data from wikipedia we can see the most common causes of data breaches: (see our analysis and fiddle with the data here) Cyber-attacks happen every day. And if you're running a small or midsize company, you're a direct target for an attack. SMBs fall victim to the vast majority of data breaches because they tend to: Lack sufficient security measures and trained personnel Hold data that's valuable to hackers (e.g., credit card numbers, protected health information) Neglect to use an offsite source or third-party service to back up their files or data, making them vulnerable to ransomware Connect to the supply chain of a larger company, and can be leveraged to break in The security of SMBs has been easier security to crack than their larger counterparts, and this has been true for almost as long as the internet has been available. In the past hackers tended to focus on the bigger targets due to the ratio of effort and risk to reward. But now, while larger businesses have been hardening their defenses, the majority of SMBs have had a tendency to believe that they are below the radar of hackers. This happens more and more every day, even when that particular firm has suffered a data breach in the past. What to do For SMB's, having the resources needed to grant a minimum level of protection from security threats is cost-prohibitive, so they tend to rely on Managed Services Providers (MSP). There are more and more MSPs focused on providing different levels of cyber security, and given the medium risk / high impact scenario, are even eager to pay 20% more AND changing providers if grant a higher level of cyber-security, according to very recent study by Continuum. A disciplined approach to security, following the best practices, is an affordable and "trust-able" way to protect your digital assets and your business. At Teracloud we help our clients at three different moments: Before a cyber-attack, we preemptively protect your company from cyber threats by implementing cutting-edge technologies and industry best practices. During a cyber-attack, our team will be standing by ready to repel any and all attackers. After a cyber-attack, Teracloud quick response can be the difference between a nuisance and going out of business. We can deploy anytime to help stop and mitigate damages. If you have concerns about your infrastructure security or you just need a free assessment do not hesitate to contact us at info@teracloud.io Damian Gitto Olguin Co-Founder / CTO Teracloud.io References: - This study made by Vistage and presented by Inc Magazine on 2018 - The Huffington Post - Article about data breaches on Wikipedia - Teracloud's analysis on the data from Wikipedia - This 4iq study - This Continuum report #cloudsecurity #AWS #pci #hipaa #wellarchitecture #startup #teracloud #databreach

Its March 2019 and Austin Texas is where South by South West takes place once a year. This is one of the biggest tech conferences of the year and is been since 1987. What SXSW has its a unique feeling because there is a combination of 3 things that makes this a great place for a conference: 1 - great weather, 2 - great food, 3 - great people. Those 3 things are key for the evolution of SXSW. The conference goes for 10 days but its separated into 3 main chapters, the first 4 days are dedicated to Technology, then 3 days for music and 3 days for the film industry. The city of Austin gets transformed during these days and it go so big that many of the streets in downtown are closed, you can only walk around or use electric scooters or bikes. And that way you get to meet incredible people on the streets. All the top tech brands are doing activations around the conference and that’s what makes this conference so interesting. Besides the hundreds of speakers that you can see during the conference itself, it’s what happens around what makes everything super interesting. This is a conference that you go to meet new people and create new relationships. Like minded people in the field that you are currently in. Or from other industries. I went for the first time in 2017 and this was my second time there. It was a great experience to meet with great people all around. I’ve seen friends from New York more during SXSW than when we are IN New York! If you want to know what are the latest trends or where the industry is going but especially if you are also new to technology / music / film in general, you can enjoy this conference to learn a lot and of course at night there are bars with activations everywhere with parties all the way around. Having the Badge from the conference is needed but there are some venues that don’t require a badge to come in. From big companies to small startups that just started, SXSW combines them all. Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality had its own presence at SXSW. I was able to experience great things like the VR Cinema at the Marriott hotel (which was part of SXSW). The essence of SXSW is exactly that, meeting great people at a great place, check the latest trends in technology music and film industries and have a great time while doing it by getting into these parties with great music, great food and live shows. #SXSW #teracloud #Austin #Cloud