Synology has warned that Southeast Asian businesses are expanding digital initiatives faster than they can secure them, creating widening gaps in resilience as data volumes soar and cyberattacks intensify across the region. The company's latest findings indicate strong momentum behind automation and efficiency programmes, but limited budgets and shortages of technical expertise continue to threaten progress.
"Data growth in Southeast Asia is accelerating faster than ever - not only because of AI, but because digital transformation has become essential for business survival. Our survey shows that nearly 90 percent of companies are already investing in digital transformation to drive future growth, mainly driven by two forces: the need to improve efficiency through automation and the pressure to reduce operational costs," said Thachawan Chinchanakarn, Head of Southeast Asia, Synology.
More than half of firms have already experienced cyberattacks, yet preparedness remains low.
"However, this rapid shift has also exposed major challenges. More than half of Southeast Asian businesses have experienced cyberattacks, yet only one in five are confident in their recovery plans. Tight budgets and limited technical expertise continue to hold many organisations back from securing their data effectively," said Chinchanakarn.
She added that the majority of organisations remain early in their modernisation efforts.
"Ultimately, while around 85 percent of businesses in the region are still in the early or mid-stages of transformation, the momentum is clear. Digital transformation is no longer optional - it's now a necessity for working smarter, improving resilience, and achieving sustainable growth," said Chinchanakarn.
Digital gaps
Budget pressures and legacy systems continue to slow progress.
"Many organisations in Southeast Asia are still in the early to mid-stages of digital transformation mainly due to budget constraints and a shortage of technical expertise. While most businesses recognise the importance of digitalisation, many still rely on traditional IT infrastructure and lack confidence in their data protection and recovery strategies. These challenges often slow down their ability to modernise systems and adopt automation at scale," said Chinchanakarn.
Against this backdrop, Synology is positioning its platform as a means to strengthen cyber resilience across distributed environments.
"Synology helps Southeast Asian businesses achieve cyber resilience by integrating advanced backup, rapid recovery, immutable storage, centralised management, and compliance-ready features to ensure business continuity and robust protection against evolving cyber threats," said Chinchanakarn.
The company is also advancing its enterprise backup portfolio, with Chinchanakarn highlighting the cost and efficiency focus of its latest offering.
"ActiveProtect enhances backup efficiency with source-based data deduplication and built-in immutability, reducing both storage consumption and operational complexity. Its unified platform streamlines data protection across all workloads - helping organisations drastically reduce recurring storage and licensing costs. This makes ActiveProtect a highly competitive solution in the enterprise backup market, setting a new standard for value and reliability," said Chinchanakarn.
Market priorities
Singapore enterprises, she noted, are responding more assertively to security and compliance demands.
"Singapore businesses are becoming increasingly proactive about strengthening data protection, driven by regulatory compliance and a heightened awareness of cyber risks. We've observed more enterprises investing in backup and disaster recovery solutions that can scale with their operations, while also ensuring data sovereignty. Many organisations are now prioritising hybrid deployment models - combining on-premises systems with cloud services - to achieve both resilience and flexibility," said Chinchanakarn.
High-performance storage is also a growing requirement as workloads become more intensive.
"The PAS7700 all-NVMe system is designed for performance-intensive environments such as financial services, video production, research, and AI training. These industries handle massive amounts of data and require extremely low latency for real-time processing. By leveraging NVMe technology, the PAS7700 enables faster access speeds and better scalability, allowing enterprises to accelerate data-driven workloads while maintaining reliability and security," said Chinchanakarn.
She added that the PAS series aims to remove bottlenecks and eliminate downtime.
"Performance bottlenecks: Modern enterprise workloads such as virtualisation, high-speed databases, and AI analytics require ultra-low latency and high IOPS. Our end-to-end NVMe architecture in PAS series eliminates traditional storage bottlenecks, delivering the responsiveness mission-critical services demand," said Chinchanakarn.
"Downtime and service interruptions: High availability is essential for enterprise operations. Our active-active dual-controller design ensures continuous service by allowing both controllers to actively handle workloads. In the event of a failure, workloads seamlessly transition with no service disruption - reducing risk and ensuring operational continuity," said Chinchanakarn.
"Dedicated OS, purpose-built machine: Operate on PAM (Parallel Active Manager), a dedicated OS different from DSM to offer mission-oriented tasks, including continuous availability management that assist IT in quickly grasping system status with detailed component-level error reporting and guided troubleshooting," said Chinchanakarn.
AI direction
AI-powered surveillance is emerging as another area of investment, driven by data sovereignty and compliance.
"Synology's AI-powered surveillance solutions are engineered to enhance both security and privacy. All sensitive data, including video recordings, facial recognition databases, and analytics, is processed and stored locally on your Synology device. This on-premise approach ensures your surveillance data never leaves your control unless you explicitly back it up to the cloud, minimising the risk of data leaks and simplifying regulatory compliance. Connections between cameras, your Synology NAS, and client devices are secured with HTTPS and SRTP, while surveillance data and archives are protected with military-grade encryption.
Furthermore, every login, video export, and event is logged to support compliance and forensic investigations. This comprehensive strategy allows organisations to leverage the full benefits of AI in surveillance without compromising data privacy," said Chinchanakarn.
She noted that Singapore remains a pivotal base for the company's regional operations. "Singapore serves as a strategic hub for Synology's operations in Southeast Asia. It's where we engage closely with enterprise customers, government agencies, and channel partners to accelerate digital transformation across the region," said Chinchanakarn.
Looking back on the company's evolution, Chinchanakarn said Synology's integrated ecosystem now spans millions of deployments worldwide. "For 25 years, we've evolved from storage innovators to global leaders in data management. Our mission has always been the same - making technology more accessible, secure, and resilient," said Chinchanakarn.
"We began our journey in 2000. In 2004, we introduced the world's first modern NAS, seamlessly integrating hardware, software, and applications - setting future standards. In the past 20 years, we've built a complete ecosystem - storage, data protection, video surveillance, productivity tools, and our global cloud platform, C2 – each piece designed to work together to provide seamless integration," said Chinchanakarn.
"Today, this ecosystem has been trusted by 14 million installations, protecting 25 million endpoints, and supporting 2 million active cameras worldwide. Every number reflects businesses that trust Synology," said Chinchanakarn.
"AI will play a crucial role in predictive maintenance, anomaly detection, and intelligent resource optimisation. For Synology, AI is not just about automation but about enabling smarter decision-making and faster responses to potential threats. We see AI enhancing backup performance, improving cybersecurity monitoring, and helping IT teams manage growing data volumes more efficiently - turning data from a burden into a strategic advantage," said Chinchanakarn.