Synology® has released ActiveProtect Manager 2.0, expanding the range of cloud, virtualisation and workplace platforms supported by its ActiveProtect data protection appliances
The update arrives as organisations face increasingly complex backup environments spread across on-premises servers, public cloud platforms and virtual machines, often making recovery slower and more expensive when systems fail or ransomware strikes.
“Managing fragmented backup infrastructure drives up costs and slows recovery,” said Jia-Yu Liu, Executive Vice President of the Synology Data Protection Group.
“The ActiveProtect appliance unites purpose-built storage with powerful data management software into a single, predictable investment,”
“APM 2.0 builds on that value, enabling organisations to safeguard their entire hybrid infrastructure through one centralised, scalable solution.”
ActiveProtect Manager 2.0 now supports Amazon EC2, Azure VM, Proxmox VE, Nutanix AHV and Google Workspace, giving IT teams broader coverage across the systems increasingly used to run business applications and store company data.
It also introduces cross-platform recovery, allowing workloads to be backed up in one environment and restored into another, which Synology says can assist with both disaster recovery and migration projects.
The company has also widened the list of available backup destinations. ActiveProtect Vault can now work with more Synology NAS models, while Azure Blob Storage has been added as a supported target for backup copies and data tiering alongside Amazon S3 Storage.
Backups held in Amazon S3 Storage or Azure Blob Storage can also now be restored directly into Amazon EC2 or Azure VM, avoiding the need to first route data back through on-premises hardware.
Security is another central focus of the release, with APM 2.0 adding software-based volume-level encryption to protect data stored on ActiveProtect systems. That means backup data and system configurations remain inaccessible if drives are stolen or hardware is lost.
Synology is also preparing a further update, ActiveProtect Manager 2.1, which will introduce AI and machine-learning anomaly detection.
The system is designed to monitor backup versions for unusual changes in file volumes, modification rates, mass deletions and entropy, which can be an indicator of encrypted ransomware files.
Where suspicious activity is detected, the affected backup copy can be moved into quarantine for administrators to review, reducing the risk of restoring compromised data during an incident.
According to Synology the model will learn from those decisions over time to improve accuracy and reduce false positives.
APM 2.1 is also set to scan backups for malware before restoration through third-party antivirus tools including Microsoft Defender, Bitdefender and ESET. If the latest backup is found to contain malware, the platform’s Auto Fallback feature will restore the most recent clean version instead.
