Home and Home Office Support

Opere Facto offers IT support to home and small businesses. Our friendly and efficient support means that your computer systems will always be working.

Many small and micro businesses often start from a home base then expand and move to an office premises. For them, IT is heart of everything that their business does to generate profit, so the correct applications and the support of those IT is applications is critical to ensure your business grows. If you are a large business, please look to the IT Support and Security page.

Home user systems have become increasingly sophisticated over the last 10 years which means they need a slightly different approach. Home users are increasingly at risk from ransomware attacks, data breaches, information theft, malicious ads, bot-net attack and so on. The list is growing every year. Opere Facto takes an effective practical approach and offers the latest advice and techniques to mitigate those problems and making using the web a friendly, happy experience.

We offer support packages for both home and small businesses. They are split between a pay as you go service, where our trained engineer can repair your system, to a monthly subscription service for micro business and home users that guarantees same day IT support and antivirus. The last support package is a monthly subscription service for small businesses that offer Office 365, remote support, patch management and anti-virus. 

Browse our IT support packages

Digital Security for the home

Opere Facto offers a product for premium domestic customers and home office customers who require increased privacy when using the internet for what has become known as digital privacy. For Opere Facto digital privacy constitutes the protection of a customer’s data, protection of themselves and their family while they are using the internet.  

Providers of internet services like Google, social media companies like Facebook and shopping sites like Amazon have no interest in keeping your data safe. Instead they collect your data every time you use the web, often without your prior knowledge and sell it to the highest bidder.

We believe that an individual’s data belongs to themselves. We also believe that an individual should have the freedom, or right, to communicate information digitally with the expectation that their communications are secure; meaning that messages and communications will only be accessible to the sender's original intended recipient. We also believe that individual has the right to remain anonymous while they are interacting on the web.

To facilitate this Opere Facto has created a service which can anonymise a person on the internet and provide the best security for the individual and their family.  

Read more about internet privacy.

The following is an example configuration that includes a mix of hardware, software products and services that when combined are particularly good at securing your system and your communications.

Hardware

Netgear SG-1100 Router

This small router is the foundation of our product and packs a serious punch. It much more powerful than a home router from, e.g. BT or Virgin, and offers an industrial strength firewall called pfsense that many larger businesses use to protect themselves. It also enables other programs to be installed on it, to fit your needs.

Yubico Yubikey

Yubikey is a small hardware device that plugs into your computer. It enables multi-factor authentication meaning you have to do a second thing after entering your password to prove its you.  The Yubikey provides that second part for you to automatically ensuring that only you can log into your account. It works with many types of software and sites including from Microsoft, Google as well as social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram

Pi-hole advertisement blocker

PI-hole is a piece of software that provides network level advertisement and internet tracker blocking. It is essentially a black hole for blocking adverts that are downloaded when you browse the internet.  Pi-hole also blocks trackers.  Trackers use what is known as cookies. Cookies are small pieces of data that are stored on your computer when you browse to a particular site. Every time you visit that site, the cookie is returned to that site and are generally harmless. However, some cookies remain active from long time and do not from the originating site. These are called third-party persistent cookies or, more colloquially, tracking cookies. These are accessed on websites that didn’t create them 

In recent years, some companies have become increasingly heavy users of third-party trackers.  Aggressive tracking enable companies can know your location, device information, purchase history, search queries, and so much more. Sometimes, you never even know this information is being collected.

Here’s a visual explanation of third-party tracking.

And an additional explanation here.

Software

VPN Service

A virtual private network is a service that is on while you browse and takes your internet connection and makes it more secure by encrypting your connection between you and the internet.  We have reviewed over 100 separate companies that offer VPN services and selected PrivateVPN as our provider.

Here’s a visual explanation of what a VPN does.

Anti-virus and Anti-malware

An anti-virus package based on Heimdal Security Thor Premium. Thor Premium provides advanced threat prevention for you and your family as well as a being a very good anti-virus solution.

Here’s a description of Thor Premium.

Multi-factor authentication

Multi-factor authentication also known as 2 factor authentication (2FA) is a security system that requires more than one method of verification to enable you to login to your account. Essentially it requires different methods of authentication.

For a visual explanation of how 2FA works please view: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mvCeNsTa1g

Services

• We provide 1 hour per month inclusive to check your system is being updated correctly and that your antivirus software is functioning correctly.

• We provide additional utilities that enable you and your family to increase your security.

• We provide the latest security information and procedures to keep you and your family safe.

• We can provide additional services and products can be added at reduced cost, e.g. backup.

Training

You and your family don’t need any training as we take care of everything.