Malaysian companies are keen to put artificial intelligence to work, but a new Synology survey suggests the harder task sits underneath the hype: getting company data secure, available and under control before AI can deliver anything lasting. The Synology Malaysia survey, shared at the firm's Annual Press Event 2026, puts data security at the centre of the local AI conversation.
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Quick facts
- Top AI hurdle: 70% of Malaysian respondents name data security and privacy
- Where firms invest: 68.6% prioritise hybrid or on-premises setups, 12.5% public cloud
- Blind spot: nearly 40% cannot see how third-party AI tools use their data
- Source: Synology survey shared at its Annual Press Event 2026 in Kuala Lumpur
What the Synology survey found
More than 90% of Malaysian respondents said AI-ready infrastructure matters to workflow efficiency and productivity, so the appetite is clearly there.
The friction is in the foundations. Asked about the biggest hurdles to AI adoption, 70% named data security and privacy, making it the most common concern. Data quality and availability followed at 42%, and 40% pointed to data being scattered across systems. Taken together, the results point to a familiar problem: the information feeding AI is often not as secure, clean or reachable as teams assume.
Businesses still lean on-premises
The survey also shows where the money is likely to go. About 68.6% of Malaysian respondents said they prioritise hybrid or on-premises infrastructure, against just 12.5% who favour public cloud. That is a notable gap, and it runs counter to the cloud-first story often told about AI. For many local firms, keeping business-critical data on hardware they control still wins.
Recovery is another soft spot. While 74% of Malaysian respondents said they are confident about bouncing back quickly from ransomware while keeping backups protected, only 26.4% described themselves as very confident. Oversight of AI tools is thinner still: nearly 40% have no visibility into how data handed to third-party AI services is used, a blind spot as staff quietly fold chatbots into daily work.
"AI creates value when it helps people do their work better and enables the business to respond more effectively to its customers," said Antoine Yang, Southeast Asia Head at Synology.
Synology's answer: storage, resilience and controlled AI
Synology framed its 2026 line-up around three priorities: scalable data infrastructure, stronger cyber resilience, and AI adoption that keeps data under the company's control. On storage, that includes the PAS7700, its first NVMe SSD system for mission-critical workloads, refreshed FS and RS series, and efficiency features such as Synology Tiering and data reduction in DSM 7.4. We covered that system when it arrived in Malaysia for enterprise workloads.
For resilience, its ActiveProtect backup appliances add immutable copies and automated isolation, with ActiveProtect Manager 2.0 now supporting more platforms including Nutanix AHV and Proxmox VE. A new 1U appliance, the DP5200, gives smaller setups a compact option with no recurring subscription fees. On the AI side, Synology Office Suite, ChatPlus and Meet keep collaboration on-premises, while the DVA7400 surveillance appliance applies AI to incident search. Much of this builds on the on-premises AI direction Synology showed at COMPUTEX 2026.
The takeaway for Malaysian businesses
The headline number is not the 90% who want AI, it is the 70% who worry about the data behind it. For Malaysian businesses, the survey reads as a reminder that AI value depends on the groundwork: secure, well-managed, recoverable data that teams can actually reach. Sort that first, and the AI ambitions have something solid to stand on.
