Synology: We've Hit a Backup And Disaster Recovery Milestone

For almost a quarter of a century, Taiwanese company Synology has steadily established itself as a leader in the network-attached storage (NAS) market. The company has pivoted throughout the years to fit its offerings to fit the times – making a shift from creating local NAS storage hardware to expanding its cloud-based backup and disaster recovery services.

While many familiar with the company may tend to think it focuses more on the consumer or prosumer markets, Synology has made moves in recent years to establish a footprint in the midmarket. Its line of RackStation XS+ and XS rackmount NASes as well as its DiskStation XS+ and XS hardware are targeted to business.

The company recently announced that it has hit a milestone: It is now securing over 20 million SaaS user accounts, endpoints, servers and VMs with its on-premise and cloud services, active backup and C2 backup.

That success may be attributed to the increase in ransomware attacks. Solid backup and restore methods are a must in the event of a ransomware incident.

"With over 70 percent of business decision-makers expressing doubts about their IT defenses against ransomware or similar threats, the need for manageable, cost-effective backup solutions has never been greater," said Joanne Weng, Synology's director of international business, in a statement.

"Our solution distinguishes itself by simplifying the entire sizing, deployment, and long-term management life-cycle of backup systems. This is important for IT departments as they grapple with limited budget, insufficient training, or staffing in a constantly changing environment," she said.

Regularly maintaining and testing the restoration of encrypted backups is a way organizations can avoid paying ransomware in the event of an attack, according to the U.S. Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency.

"Test backup procedures on a regular basis. It is important that backups are maintained offline, as many ransomware variants attempt to find and subsequently delete or encrypt accessible backups to make restoration impossible unless the ransom is paid," CISA advises.

Additionally, CISA said that organizations should: "Maintain and regularly update 'golden images' of critical systems. This includes maintaining image "templates" that have a preconfigured operating system (OS) and associated software applications that can be quickly deployed to rebuild a system, such as a virtual machine or serve."

For backup and recovery needs, Synology told MES Computing that it recommends its DS1823xs+, RS2423P+, and RS3621xs+for enterprises.

Synology's DiskStation Manager interface works across its line of devices. It offers file storage and sharing, disaster recovery, and surveillance that includes AI-powered video analytics.