CBA Italy Builds a Comprehensive and Scalable Data Management and Employee Credentials System with Synology

CBA Italy uses a mix of systems and services designed for small businesses. As business grew, these systems could no longer scale to match the size of their business and were no longer cost-effective. Their IT also required continuous manual intervention, with employee onboarding, permissions editing, and (manual) backup management, which became too time-consuming. The fragmented nature of the solutions posed a potential security risk, increasing the possibility of oversights exposing the company to cyber threats.

CBA Italy needed a comprehensive solution that would be easy to configure, automate daily tasks, and provide seamless integration with its existing workflow. It also needed to meet strict standards for data management, security, and threat protection while simultaneously reducing overhead expenses.

CBA Italy found that Synology's integrated on-premises and cloud-based solutions were ideal for their needs as a growing consultancy, allowing them to maintain their workflow, scale flexibly and cost-effectively, and bolster their IT security.

As their new main file server for over 30 TB of shared data, the company deployed a 12-bay Plus Series tower server. The DS2422 offers up to 218 TB of raw storage and advanced data management tools in a compact and silent chassis, without requiring a server room or dedicated rackspace. Leveraging the integrated backup solutions available in Synology DSM, they added two layers of data redundancy in line with the 3-2-1 backup strategy to provide maximum ransomware and disaster protection.

For its on-site backup, CBA uses Synology Hyper Backup to duplicate all data and configurations on its primary file server and send them to an 8-bay Plus Series tower server. Thanks to block-level incremental backup, data deduplication, and compression, Hyper Backup helps minimize storage consumption and cut backup times. At the same time, configurable rotation policies allow for the automated deletion of older backups.

When CBA's backup strategy is completed, off-site copies are created in a two-stage process to ensure minimal impact on operations. Using Snapshot Replication, near-instantaneous snapshots of all data on the file server are copied to an identical 12-bay server without affecting the availability of system resources. Snapshots are then uploaded from the secondary server to C2 Storage, Synology's dedicated off-site cloud destination for backups, to provide maximum redundancy.

CBA Italy opted to use Synology C2 Identity to improve its identity management along with its control over resource and service access. Synology's cloud identity and access management (IAM) service lets organizations unify control of and provide single sign-on for user accounts, Windows and Mac devices, and dozens of cloud applications.

With C2 Identity, CBA Italy centrally manages employee credentials across multiple on-premises and cloud systems, providing them with access to services and resources appropriate for their position. Additionally, they use C2 Identity Edge Server to host a local directory server node, providing low-latency access to on-premises resources. Support for managing macOS systems through Jamf Pro and regulating employees' Microsoft 365 use has helped significantly streamline IT management.

These Synology solutions for data and identity management have enabled CBA Italy to grow while keeping its IT compliant, cost-effective, and secure.

C2 Identity has given IT staff the ability to manage their existing solutions and services while automating many of their user management tasks, allowing them greater security, smoother access to resources, and also significant cost reductions.

Synology DSM on the DS2419+ ensures CBA Italy's employees have fast and reliable access to centralized data with secure access management.

Hyper Backup helps CBA's IT staff automate snapshot backups to a secondary system, all while using compression and deduplication technology to save on storage usage.

C2 Storage provides secure cloud storage for backups made with Hyper Backup, completing CBA Italy's comprehensive 3-2-1 data backup strategy.

Snapshot Replication gives their organization essential security against cyber threats. With snapshots that can be created and restored nearly instantly, they are further protected with critical off-site redundancy by storing them in a second system and keeping secondary copies in the Synology C2 cloud.