Get ready for the vital launch of Synology’s groundbreaking ActiveProtect solution for 2025! With an exciting local debut just last month, Synology has undergone a remarkable transformation since its inception in 2000, now boasting an impressive array of products and services that cater to more customers worldwide than ever before – check out the video presentation below and dive deeper!
Over the last 25 years, Taiwan-based Synology has evolved into a global powerhouse, delivering robust storage and backup solutions, alongside cutting-edge hardware like routers, security cameras, and intelligent software – plus AI!
Continuing its move into even better supporting the business and public sector markets, the company announced the general availability of ActiveProtect in January this year, a new line of data protection appliances that integrate enterprise backup software, server, and backup repository into a unified solution.
Designed to simplify complex data protection, the company explains “ActiveProtect offers comprehensive platform support, advanced security, and scalability, all with a transparent pricing model.”
ActiveProtect saw its local launch in Australia in late March. In the presentation that I filmed and can be seen below, Synology’s Regional Sales Manager, Michael Chang, explained the comapny’s growth and strength, the state of the market and security, its impressive range of global and local customers and more, after which Jasmine Chiu, Synology’s Country Sales Manager for Australia and New Zealand, launched the ActiveProtect solution, explaining why it’s needed and why businesses are buying and using them.
ActiveProtect itself offers backup, deduplication, replication, and instant recovery capabilities, tackling three key practical challenges to deliver a versatile and scalable data protection service, which you can read about in the article that continues below the video.
“Data protection should empower businesses, not burden businesses,” said Jia-Yu Liu, Executive Vice President at Synology. “ActiveProtect embodies Synology’s expertise in hardware and software engineering and insights from close collaboration with customers. We are confident that ActiveProtect will exceed enterprises’ expectations for data protection.”
So, to learn plenty more, let’s watch Michael and Jasmine’s presentation – with more information following thereafter!
So what is more information on why ActiveProtect is needed?
As global cybersecurity threats escalate, Synology explains that ransomware attacks continue to rise in frequency and severity, driving an urgent demand for robust data protection solutions. However, Synology’s 2024 Global Enterprise Data Management Survey reveals that many organisations face challenges in achieving comprehensive data backups due to budget constraints, limited resources, and the complexity of existing solutions. Consequently, less than half of the respondents from both large and small-to-medium-sized businesses feel adequately prepared to counter ransomware attacks.
“After collaborating with customers across various industries and scales, we found that many businesses face practical barriers that prevent them from fully safeguarding all operational aspects,” said Jia-Yu Liu, Executive Vice President of Application Group at Synology. “This means that organisations remain exposed to cybersecurity risks—a critical area that Synology has long been committed to addressing.”
Synology, which has evolved into a global leader in data management since its founding in 2025, has introduced its impressive solution to address these challenges as seen in the video above: ActiveProtect.
A purpose-built backup appliance with an integrated operating system designed to meet diverse enterprise needs, ActiveProtect offers backup, deduplication, replication, and instant recovery capabilities, tackling three key practical challenges to deliver a versatile and scalable data protection service.
The three key practical challenges are below, here is Synology’s short video on the ActiveProtect solution first:
Pre-configured for Optimal Performance
Jia-Yu Liu observed that most existing market solutions require IT staff to assemble hardware and software themselves, which raises concerns about whether the resulting system can meet the organisation’s functional and performance needs. For instance, if a business wants immutable backups and deduplication to minimise storage demands, achieving these goals often requires integrating solutions from multiple vendors. This involves extensive research and negotiation with multiple suppliers.
In contrast to the uncertainties of self-assembled solutions, ActiveProtect offers a preconfigured, rigorously tested data protection package from Synology. Jackie Lee, Senior Manager of Backup Products at Synology, highlighted that the tight integration of software and hardware enables optimised storage allocation, efficient data reordering, image-level data processing, and built-in source-side deduplication and immutable encryption. This approach not only enhances processing performance but also significantly reduces the time and effort required from IT staff during the setup phase.
Minimising Management Resources
The second challenge is helping IT teams deploy a comprehensive data protection framework with minimal time investment. ActiveProtect simplifies the process, enabling initial setup within 10 minutes. This rapid deployment is possible because ActiveProtect is an all-in-one appliance that evenly distributes workloads across the organization. IT staff can easily manage backups using highly customisable rules based on data attributes and importance.
“Critical systems like financial operations, customer data, and executive files are all equally vital to business continuity,” noted Jia-Yu Liu. “ActiveProtect allows organisations to apply consistent backup policies, including replication and immutable backups, across platforms. As new sources with similar priorities are added, these policies can be easily extended to ensure quick and comprehensive data protection.”
ActiveProtect’s unified management interface offers another advantage: centralised monitoring and control of all backup architectures. IT teams can view backup statuses across local, remote, and cloud environments and even restore data replicated to the cloud directly to branch offices without switching platforms. This streamlines and simplifies the data protection workflow.
Multilayer Deduplication—Reducing Storage Costs
With the rapid growth of data volumes and increased audit requirements, businesses must retain more data for extended periods, making storage costs a significant concern. Liu acknowledged that IT teams often prioritise protecting high-level critical data, leaving gaps in overall protection that could evolve into cybersecurity risks.
“To help businesses maximise the scope of their data protection, our R&D team has implemented features that enhance storage scalability,” explained Jackie Lee. “One such feature is ActiveProtect’s multilayered deduplication mechanism.”
Using the example of backing up employee computers, Jackie described how ActiveProtect first compares data at the source—on the employee’s device—against similar data already stored on the backup server, transmitting only changes or new files, potentially saving up to 99% of transmission bandwidth.
Once on the backup server, cross-platform deduplication ensures that only unique data across sources such as virtual servers is retained. Finally, when multiple backup servers replicate data to a remote site, cross-site deduplication further optimizes storage and bandwidth usage, reducing storage demands by an average of over 50%.
So, what are the key features of ActiveProtect appliances? Synology explains:
– Unified solution: This solution combines backup, recovery, and management in a single appliance, eliminating the need for separate hardware and software, sizing, purchase, and maintenance.
– Comprehensive workload support: Protects PCs, Macs, file and physical servers, virtual machines, databases, and Microsoft 365 services through a single intuitive interface.
– Scalable management: The ActiveProtect Manager (APM) console supports users in viewing or monitoring up to 150,000 workloads or 2,500 sites, providing scalability, enterprise-grade data visibility, and control.
– Advanced protection: Offers immutable backups, air-gap capabilities, and regulatory compliance to guard against cyber threats.
– Efficiency at scale: Delivers fast incremental backups with global source-side deduplication, reducing network load by up to 99% and storage needs by 50%, empowering backup performance and minimising operational costs.
– Unique pricing model: Businesses can access full platform support and complete advanced protection features with a one-time purchase of additional subscriptions required. Managing up to three backup servers is also license-free, with optional CMS licenses available for larger deployments involving more appliances.
“Synology ActiveProtect Appliances have proven to be exceptional in management efficiency and data protection,” said Liao, IT Manager at J-Shine International Logistics.
“Our experience has been very satisfying so far. The installation process is quick and straightforward, eliminating many of the complicated steps we used to face. Furthermore, the unified management interface has reduced the time needed for daily backup server maintenance to just one-tenth of what it was before. Its nearly 80% deduplication rate also provides significant cost savings.”
ActiveProtect is now available globally through Synology’s distributor and partner network. More information is here.
Conclusion
ActiveProtect is a next-generation data protection solution developed entirely from customer needs. By offering simplified management and exceptional performance, it addresses challenges such as the complexities of self-assembled systems, management inefficiencies, and high storage costs. In the face of increasingly severe cyberattacks, ActiveProtect empowers organisations to mitigate risks, bolster operational resilience, and confidently navigate the evolving cybersecurity landscape.
