Synology DiskStation

Ha ha ha. Close to 60 😁 Yeah, risk to reward

I have lots of disk space on my main computer, which I mostly use to process photos. I wanted a way to archive my photos, so I initially used CDs, the DVDs, then USB hard drives. Eventually I decided to try a NAS solution, at the time I thought a small D-Link DNS-323 would do, with two disk spaces, that ended up being too small, even with two TB in RAID 1. Finally I looked at some more serious NASes, and I picked Synology because it has some nifty features and it uses a web browser as an interface for all controls. And it has linux as its underpinnings, so that was a perfect match for me :-)
So now my main computer runs Linux, I have 6 TB of disk space on it. And the DS918+ is fully populated with 4 x 16 TB Seagate Ironwolf NAS Pro. I duplicate the contents of the computer to the NAS, and I backup the NAS to 16 TB drives, which I then ship offsite.
I do not open my network to the outside world, not even for myself.
To display images, I have a Smugmug account.

Ever ridden a motorcycle on a warm summers day at 200+ km/hr wearing nothing more than shorts and a Tee shirt? The wind ripping at your face, trying to rip your hair out by the roots, every single nerve in your body screaming at you, not sure if it's pleasure or self preservation. You do not know what being alive is unless you've done something like that, instead of cocooning yourself with every safety feature available to you. It's like nothing else. Something you'll never forget, as long as you live.
My cousin and I have raced each other home on our motorcycles, on warm summers nights, throttle to the stop, no helmets, flat stick, laughing like lunatics the whole time. There. Is. Nothing. Like. That. Life altering. In some ways, I understand junkies.

No, you cannot get carried away with being too secure. If you’re using a simple password you can lose all your money in a flash. You should rotate your passwords and it’s best to use a password manager program which generates a unique, highly complex password for each of your websites. I use 1Password, but there are now managers built into the browsers and so on.
But you should be using passwords like: 38):_yo!&YcO&;93!coe
And not: Ghubdredbucks

Maybe you would like to look at this article. www.purecloudsolutions.co.uk/how-long-will-it-take-to-hack-your-password/#:~:text=On%20average%20it%20only%20takes,into%20a%20seven%2Dcharacter%20password. As has been said it's your account but your treating this far too lightly IMHO

Jim,
I’d like to understand what you mean here. Do you mean you would not expose your Synology to the Internet at all, that you wouldn’t allow remote logins, or you wouldn’t allow anonymous port 80 http?

It would be awesome if you can do all of that with standard package.

With the amount of fear displayed here, a lot of you don't want a NAS, what you want is a photo storage/display site along the lines of Flickr/Smugmug paid through a third party app/direct debit or the like. Far easier and less risk.

Good point. But I think it’s best if we understand the best applications of each approach. For instance, most of those sharing sites are jpeg only, and they have significant capacity limits. So if you want to post RAWs or HEIF’s, most of them won’t work.

For example, I’m working on a project with a colleague overseas who is editing my video. It’s very easy to just pop the unedited videos onto my Synology for him to download. For collaboration the Synology seems best. It would be even better if it pushed its contents to an ultra-fast cloud server, so my colleague could download faster, but that gets expensive. For me, right at the moment, I just want to master what my Synology can do, and at the same time, ensure security.

For example: For my remote user colleague, I configured his application permissions as DSM and File Station: Allow. Everything else is Deny. Seems to work. He cannot access File Station without DSM access for some reason.

So not using 2FA is a statement about lifestyle? Life is more fun with 1FA? That kind of thing?

For the DMZ solution, I'd write firewall rules for the DMZ zone that allowed outside access, and not connect any device to the DMZ net that wasn't sacrificial. I've done that before for web servers. But I don't host my own web servers any more.

For myself, I use a hosting service to share photos. Media Temple, soon to be GoDaddy (not my choice).

I've got nothing against plain old http in the right circumstances except that it is flagged as harmful by web browsers these days.

Synology has an app called CloudStation. This syncs a folder ('SynologyDrive') on the Synology with one or more computers. I have all my personal stuff in that folder and it's auto-synced to both my desktop and my laptop. This works even when I'm on holiday abroad through the 'connect.to' system of Synology.

So you could create such a folder on your Synology and give your friend access to it. The moment that you put a video in that folder it's auto-synced to your friends' computer. If his computer is switched on of course.

I use Google Drive for that.

Why would you share all your files with Google if you have the perfect private solution?

I've not come up with a private solution that I consider perfect. Or a hosted solution, for that matter. My time as CIO of an electronics company has made me cautious about handling all the security aspects of an implementation by myself. Google Workspace security is quite advanced and flexible.

You do not handle the security, Synology does that. I take it you trust Google more than Synology; my view is the opposite. Sending all your personal stuff to Google is, as we say in the Netherlands, 'tying the cat to the bacon', IOW you're sure the bacon gets eaten by the cat. Synology has a different business model. The bacon is only eaten if a hacker penetrates the Synology system.

I could be wrong, but it's my view at this moment.