Austin- Cybercriminals aren’t Iron Man’s main enemies, but actor Robert Downey Jr. wants to be the cybersecurity hero. On Saturday afternoon, the 11th, in Texas, home of South by Southwest, the festival of innovation for different fields better known as SXSW, he moderated a panel on cybercrime. Your references on the subject? Be an investor and poster artist for Aura Identity Theft Protection.

Entering the stage in a dark suit, light blue striped shirt and tie, and yellow socks (with shaved hair), Downey Jr. warned the audience that in addition to performing in the commercial playing on screens a few minutes before, he had become an investor in Aura.

Downey Jr., who lived Iron Man in 10 film productions, had six startups in his portfolio so far. He had invested in companies like Forethought, in artificial intelligence; Kindred Motorworks, electric vehicles and Pocket.watch, a creative studio for youtubers. Aura is the second cybersecurity company in its portfolio alongside Canadian 1Password.

Founded in 2019 in Boston by Hari Ravichandran and Manuel Molina, Aura is positioned as a security application against digital crimes, from finance to identity. The company held four seed rounds and raised a total of US$500.7 million. The latest, held in October 2021, had Madrone Capital as lead investor, which joined five others, such as Warburg Pincus.

“The potential of losing your assets online is more likely than in real life,” the Hollywood star said as an introduction to the topic amid issues with the teleprompter (equipment used by the presenter to read text). Amid the failure, Downey Jr. joked that he didn’t expect to improvise like Chris Rock.

To get back to the seriousness of the subject, he specifies that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) reported a loss of 10.3 billion dollars in the United States via digital crime in 2022, an amount greater than the GDP of 50 country. And three times more than the common law crime.

“Cybercrime is not the hacker. We got used to saying the criminal is the hacker because of the dark web. But this type of crime is common and is spreading all over cyberspace trying to trick users, including on social media,” said Erick O’Neill, security consultant and former FBI. He worked for years as a ‘ghost’ within the institution unraveling suspicious transactions and gained notoriety for unmasking Russian spy Robert Hanssen, who had been with the FBI for 25 years – the story became the movie “Breach”, in 2007.

In the United States, the average is 25 applications per mobile device. With such hyper-connectivity, this type of crime increases by 30 to 40% per year. The most interesting thing is that it doesn’t need much sophistication to hook victims. In most cases, the Aura CEO warns, the criminals involve people with public information found on social media.

“They seem to be friends. They come in talking intimately and, for example, show the opportunity to get rich with a new cryptocurrency. The engaging conversation heads to an asset growth screen and you are tempted to invest all your money, after all, it’s time to get rich. But without realizing it, all your money is gone,” Ravichandran said.

Basic security tips in the digital world have been reinforced, such as not waiting for the bank when you notice a strange movement on the card; prefer biometrics to login and password in financial institutions; avoid the single password for everything and create different accesses that make any attempt to break it difficult; and shut down social media. The alert serves to curb financial and data theft, which splashes all businesses with sensitive information.

“Be careful with information about your family, vacations and places that you mark as your location on your social media. Rest assured that this data makes you vulnerable,” Ravichandran warned.

And O’Neill added: Children and the elderly are most likely to give information. Cybercriminals work like artists, pretending to be close people with friendly speech. “Children and the elderly should know that everything in the virtual world should be suspicious and not pass on any type of information,” the former FBI said.