With the evolving tech landscape, IT teams are now tasked with multiple assignments in addition to dealing with challenges such as rising costs, ransomware, long-term data retention needs, and more, according to Synology’s 2025 Enterprise Data Management Survey.
When asked about their confidence in recovering mission-critical data, over 90% of companies admitted they lacked confidence in being able to retrieve company data in the event of a malware attack.
Cyber threats: One of today’s biggest data protection challenges
Rising costs and fragmented legacy data protection solutions could lead businesses to look for new options to secure their data. IT admins dealing with previous data protection solutions to manage scattered workloads may find it difficult (and expensive) to manage and monitor all their data effectively. When looking for a new, streamlined data protection solution, IT admins might also have to deal with budget constraints.
Companies mentioned worrying about security issues such as a lack of immutability, and backup verification capabilities, which lowers business’ confidence in being able to successfully recover data when faced with sudden data loss. This is especially a problem as companies need to be thoroughly prepared to deal with ransomware.
With a rise in cyber attacks, hackers are developing creative ways to get a hold of corporate data. Companies must strengthen their data protection strategy in order to maintain business continuity.
With a growing number of mandatory data retention laws that require companies to store data for a specific amount of time in a specific region, data protection can get complicated, especially with logistical challenges that come with handling data across borders.
Businesses must implement a data protection solution that meets long-term data retention requirements for regulatory compliance and standards such as HIPAA, GDPR, ISO 27001, etc. Multinational corporations need to be mindful and meet local data residency laws, meaning that data must stay in that particular region.
What Synology has observed
We’ve observed that most organizations are leaving a gap in their data protection strategy.
Some companies might not have the capacity, personnel, or the budget to set up and implement an extensive data protection solution. According to Synology’s 2025 Enterprise Data Management Survey, many companies recognize the importance of a robust data protection strategy, however they might not have the resources necessary to implement a suitable solution.
Small and medium-sized businesses often lack a dedicated cybersecurity administrator, making it difficult to start a data protection strategy from scratch. By contrast, large enterprises tend to have the resources, but their complex IT architectures and integration challenges, make it hard to operate with complete visibility.
Companies are also looking for advanced security systems, which includes Write Once, Read Many (WORM) capabilities, air-gapped backups for logical or physical isolation of data, and role-based access controls to limit employee access to data. These can help businesses gain confidence in recovering data and mitigate downtime in the event of a disaster.
Long-term data retention can be complex, which is why companies need to plan in advance and set policies that align with business, legal, and compliance requirements. Most companies are aware of the legal requirements and the repercussions of not having a long-term data retention strategy and are taking steps to implement it.
Solve your data protection challenges with an integrated backup appliance
With a long list of challenges, IT admins need a way to streamline their data protection and close the gaps so that companies are not caught by surprise and have the means to monitor and manage all their backups, defend against ransomware, and meet compliance requirements.
Here’s how Synology ActiveProtect can help businesses:
Data visibility: Manage all your on-prem and SaaS workloads from one unified console and keep track of all your data. No need to manage scattered data across several platforms.
Defend against ransomware: With immutable backups, no edits or deletions can be made to your data. Copies of your backups can be stored separately so that a clean version of your data is always available for recovery with air-gapping.
Meet regulatory compliance: Meet long-term data retention and compliance requirements by storing backup copies on on-prem or cloud solutions. Safely store copies of your data for a specific amount of time to meet legal requirements.
Cost-effective solution: With rising costs, businesses need a future-proof data protection solution that doesn’t require extra fees for licensing, maintenance, and more. Businesses need an accessible and affordable product that meets their backup needs.
Click here to learn more about ActiveProtect.