How a Boarding School Protected Thousands of Accounts with Synology

How a Boarding School Protected 2,400+ Student and Teacher Accounts with Synology

Educational institutions face unique technology challenges. Unlike many businesses, schools must manage large numbers of user accounts, maintain long-term records, protect sensitive student information, and support both current and former users. As cloud adoption accelerates across K-12 and higher education, IT departments are increasingly tasked with securing and retaining data across multiple platforms while controlling costs.

One example comes from Western Reserve Academy, a boarding school that needed to protect more than 2,400 student, faculty, staff, and alumni accounts spread across Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace environments. As cloud data volumes continued to grow, the institution faced rising backup costs, increasingly complex management requirements, and growing concerns about long-term data retention.

Their journey provides valuable lessons for schools and universities seeking to modernize data protection while improving operational efficiency.

The Challenge of Managing Educational Data

Schools generate and retain enormous amounts of information.

This includes:

• Student records

• Faculty communications

• Coursework

• Shared documents

• Administrative files

• Alumni information

Unlike many commercial organizations, educational institutions often need to retain data for years or even decades.

For Western Reserve Academy, maintaining access to historical alumni information was becoming increasingly important. At the same time, protecting active Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace environments required a scalable and cost-effective solution.

The Problem with Cloud-Only Protection

Cloud productivity platforms offer exceptional collaboration capabilities, but many educational institutions discover that long-term retention and backup costs can increase significantly as data grows.

Challenges often include:

• Rising subscription costs

• Limited retention flexibility

• Complex recovery processes

• Multiple management platforms

• Budget constraints

The school’s IT team wanted greater control over data protection while reducing long-term operational expenses.

Supporting Both Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace

Many educational institutions operate hybrid productivity environments.

In this case, both Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace played important roles in daily operations.

Managing protection across two platforms created challenges such as:

• Separate administrative interfaces

• Different retention policies

• Multiple recovery workflows

• Increased management overhead

The school needed a solution capable of protecting both ecosystems from a centralized platform.

Building a Centralized Backup Strategy

The institution implemented a more unified approach to backup and recovery.

Rather than relying entirely on cloud-native retention capabilities, the IT team established independent backup protection designed to provide:

• Long-term retention

• Granular recovery

• Centralized administration

• Better cost predictability

• Greater data ownership

This approach simplified operations while improving resilience.

The Role of Synology

Synology became a key component of the school’s data protection strategy.

Synology solutions enabled the institution to:

• Protect Microsoft 365 data

• Protect Google Workspace data

• Centralize backup management

• Maintain independent recovery copies

• Support long-term retention requirements

• Simplify administrative oversight

Instead of managing multiple backup products, administrators gained visibility into data protection from a single platform.

Long-Term Alumni Data Retention

One of the most significant benefits involved preserving alumni information.

Educational institutions often need access to historical communications and records long after students graduate.

With an independent backup repository, the school gained greater flexibility for:

• Alumni records retention

• Historical document access

• Compliance requirements

• Archival management

This reduced concerns about losing access to important institutional information over time.

Unexpected Benefits Beyond Backup

While backup protection was the primary objective, the institution discovered additional advantages.

One notable benefit involved surveillance storage.

As storage resources became more centralized and scalable, the school was able to support longer video retention periods for security systems.

This improved:

• Campus security investigations

• Incident review capabilities

• Operational visibility

• Data retention flexibility

The project ultimately delivered value beyond its original scope.

Simplifying Administration for IT Teams

Managing thousands of user accounts can be challenging for educational IT departments with limited staff.

Centralized management helped reduce:

• Administrative complexity

• Backup monitoring workload

• Recovery effort

• Reporting challenges

The IT team gained more time to focus on strategic projects instead of routine maintenance tasks.

Lessons for K-12 Schools

K-12 institutions can learn several important lessons from this project.

Plan for Long-Term Growth

Student populations, data volumes, and cloud services continue expanding.

Backup strategies should be designed with future growth in mind.

Maintain Independent Recovery Copies

Cloud platforms are essential, but independent backups provide additional protection and control.

Simplify Management

Centralized administration reduces workload and improves visibility.

Think Beyond Backups

Storage investments can support additional operational initiatives such as surveillance retention and archival projects.

Lessons for Higher Education Institutions

Universities and colleges often face similar challenges at a larger scale.

Higher education organizations should focus on:

• Long-term data retention

• Research data protection

• Multi-platform backup support

• Cost management

• Compliance readiness

A centralized backup strategy can simplify operations while improving resilience.

Why Educational Data Protection Matters

Schools and universities depend on reliable access to information.

Data loss can affect:

• Academic operations

• Student services

• Compliance obligations

• Administrative functions

• Institutional reputation

Modern backup strategies help educational institutions protect their most valuable digital assets while maintaining operational continuity.

About Epis Technology

Epis Technology helps educational institutions modernize data protection through Synology consulting, Microsoft 365 backups, Google Workspace protection, disaster recovery planning, and infrastructure optimization. The company specializes in enterprise storage solutions, cloud data protection, business continuity services, and long-term data retention strategies.

By helping schools build scalable, centralized, and resilient backup environments, Epis Technology enables IT teams to protect critical information, simplify administration, and support future growth with confidence.