Synology Expands ActiveProtect Platform to Cover More Hybrid IT Environments
Synology has released ActiveProtect Manager 2.0 (APM 2.0), expanding the company’s data protection platform with broader support for cloud and virtualisation environments, cross-platform recovery and enhanced security. The update is aimed at organisations managing increasingly fragmented IT infrastructures across on-premises systems, public clouds and multiple virtualisation platforms.
With APM 2.0, Synology is extending ActiveProtect’s coverage to Amazon EC2, Microsoft Azure VM, Proxmox VE, Nutanix AHV and Google Workspace. “Managing fragmented backup infrastructure drives up costs and slows recovery,” said Jia-Yu Liu, Executive Vice President of the Synology Data Protection Group. “APM 2.0 builds on that value, enabling organisations to safeguard their entire hybrid infrastructure through one centralised, scalable solution.”
One of the key additions in APM 2.0 is cross-platform recovery, allowing organisations to back up workloads in one environment and restore them into another. The capability is designed to support both disaster recovery and workload migration, giving IT teams greater flexibility when moving workloads between infrastructure platforms.
Synology has also expanded the options available for backup storage. ActiveProtect Vault now supports a broader range of Synology NAS models, while Azure Blob Storage has been added to the supported copy and tiering destinations.
Organisations storing backups in Amazon S3 Storage or Azure Blob Storage can also restore workloads directly to Amazon EC2 or Azure VM environments. By allowing cloud-based recovery without routing workloads through on-premises infrastructure, Synology says the approach can significantly reduce recovery times.
APM 2.0 introduces software-based volume-level storage encryption, providing an additional layer of protection for data at rest. The feature is designed to ensure backup data and system configurations remain inaccessible if storage drives are stolen or physical hardware is lost.
Synology is also preparing further security enhancements in APM 2.1, which will introduce AI/ML-based anomaly detection. The technology will analyse each backup version for changes in data change rates, file activity, mass deletions and entropy, helping identify potentially suspicious behaviour.
When an anomaly is detected, the affected backup will be moved into quarantine for administrator review. The system will also use the outcome of those investigations to refine its detection model and reduce false positives over time.
The planned APM 2.1 capabilities reflect a broader shift in enterprise data protection, with backup platforms increasingly being used to identify threats rather than simply store recovery copies. Synology’s system is designed to detect unusual activity that could indicate backup contamination or ransomware activity before compromised data is used for recovery.
APM 2.1 will add another layer through pre-restoration malware scanning. Using integrated third-party antivirus technologies such as Microsoft Defender, Bitdefender and ESET, the platform will scan backups before they are restored. If malware is detected in the most recent backup, Auto Fallback will identify the latest clean version and use it for recovery.
ActiveProtect Manager 2.0 is available at no additional cost for all Synology DP-Series appliances. The latest release expands Synology’s proposition from centralised backup management towards a broader hybrid data protection and cyber-resilience platform, giving enterprises greater flexibility across cloud, virtualisation and on-premises environments while laying the foundation for AI-assisted threat detection and recovery.
