Transparent Consulting
For Your Digital World

Specializing in small business, remote IT support, home automation & custom web development – I’m here to help you find the right solutions for you.

Hi, I’m Paul! I’m the founder, and lead engineer behind Open Source IT Solutions.

Too many small businesses are left with terrible options, and especially horrible advice when it comes to their IT needs. I’m here to help you harness the wide variety of solutions available when it comes to the digital world. 
With over 20 years of experience building kick-ass systems & networks for clients ranging from small not-for-profits, to multi-national corporations, I draw on those skills to bring enterprise grade solutions to everyone, at costs that makes sense, and are transparent.
I believe in doing business with honesty, integrity, being upfront, and making things right. 
Services

Solutions For Every Part
Of Your Small Business

As a full service consulting solutions, I’m your offsite IT-department. From building your office network with next-gen WiFi, setting up (or updating!) your website, solving your telephony needs, or providing security monitoring, I have you covered – and I keep it running with white-glove support for your digital life.

Connect to your applications from anywhere, automate backups of your critical data, get reliable advice, and cut your IT costs dramatically. In an age where we’re forever connected, I’ll help you leverage technology to work for you.

You Need A Password Manager

December 2, 2022

Just, make sure it’s not LastPass. They have once again suffered a breach in their security today (December 2022) with their last breaches occurring just a few months ago in August 2022, and another one a few years earlier. For a security based company, they sure seem to have a problem with it. Besides that, they’re owned by GoTo, who is the parent company behind GoToMeeting, LogMeIn, and other trash pieces of software that I wouldn’t trust. Oh, and Lastpass’ free tier is complete garbage.

But, you should absolutely be using a password manager. I’m going to explain why, along with how to use one properly, and my suggestions for which one you should be considering. They not only make your digital life considerably more secure, but they can prevent you from extreme frustration every time you need to login to some service that you haven’t used in the last few years.

I Just Lost All My Data, But It’s OK.

August 12, 2022

The inevitable happened to me today. I had something fail, and it’s wasn’t just a “little” something, either. My Synology DS1515+ NAS just won’t power on. This is the device that houses basically all of my data. I’ve got it configured in a RAID setup (I’ll talk about this more later), but the actual device just is dead. There was a power outage earlier today in a good portion of the city and I powered off my units before the battery backups were drained. When the power was restored, everything came back up but my NAS. The thing is, I’m sitting here very calm and not feeling panic in the least because I know I’m going to be OK.

But this wasn’t always the case. About 7 years ago I lost a TON of data. Basically everything. All my photos, music, movies, documents. It was a mess and I was devastated. I’d built a NAS on Ubuntu and had 5 drives in a RAID configuration – only 3 drives died and I had no idea until it was too late. I still have that server and there’s a reasonable chance I can recover a good portion of my data, but it’ll be $2500 and frankly I’ve been OK with that data loss. But, I learned a very valuable lesson and I’ll never let it happen again.

Schools Spy On You.

August 1, 2022

Chances are that you, one of your children, or at very least someone you know is taking school classes online. This number has obviously exploded with the pandemic and basically the entirety of the world’s schooling being virtual, however at this point we’re more or less “back to normal”. Prior to the pandemic there absolutely was e-learning software out there, but for obvious reasons they’ve become far more prevalent since March 2020.

Enter Lanschool. A program initially developed in the 80’s, but really went into the modern era in 2018 with their “Lanschool Air” version. Think of their classic program as being a parental control program on a computer, but their “air” version being exactly the same only it’s completely remotely administered. Oh, and it’s also got a really cool feature that allows the “teacher” to have complete control over the user’s computer. Yes that’s right, they can secretly enable microphones, the webcam, have full access to view, edit, and deleted your files – heck, they can even add ones of their own! They can log all of your keystrokes, meaning that they can even record all of your usernames/passwords, or credit card information, all in the background. Simply put, Lanschool is a completely evil tool and you need to be aware of what you’re giving someone access to if you’ve got it installed on any of your devices.

    Contact Us

    E: [email protected]
    Toll Free : 1.833.4.MY.OSIT
    Phone : 647.479.5036
    Fax : 647.945.9801

    1015 - 96 St Patrick St
    Toronto, ON
    M5T 1V2

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    Made in Toronto, Canada
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