As more organizations move work into Atlassian Cloud, security becomes a shared responsibility between platform and customer. Teams need stronger controls around identity, access, data protection, and threat response, without slowing down collaboration.

Atlassian Guard is designed to meet that need. It provides centralized security and risk management across Atlassian Cloud products, helping organizations protect sensitive data, detect threats early, and respond quickly when issues arise.

This guide breaks down what Atlassian Guard does, how it works, and why it matters, especially for organizations operating in regulated or complex environments.

Security checkpoint with an attendant verifying access at a control desk

What Is Atlassian Guard?

Atlassian Guard is Atlassian’s advanced security layer for Cloud environments. It extends standard administrative controls with organization‑wide security policies, identity enforcement, threat detection, and audit visibility.

Guard helps organizations:

Enforce consistent access controls
Reduce the risk of data loss or misuse
Detect suspicious behavior across products
Respond to incidents before they escalate

It is built to support both day‑to‑day security operations and long‑term compliance requirements.

Key Features of Atlassian Guard

1. Proactively Protect Against Data Loss

Preventing data loss requires more than basic access controls. Teams need visibility into where sensitive information lives, how it is shared, and who can access it. In Jira and Confluence, collaboration features such as exports, public links, and anonymous access are useful, but they can introduce risk when applied to confidential or mission‑critical content.

Atlassian Guard helps reduce this risk by enforcing consistent identity controls, applying data security policies, and monitoring for behaviors that could lead to unintended data exposure. It allows organizations to govern how users, third‑party apps, and external collaborators interact with content stored in Atlassian Cloud.

For organizations using Atlassian Guard Premium, data protection is further strengthened through classification and automated scanning. Sensitive content can be identified and labeled, making it easier to apply stricter policies to high‑risk data. Automated alerts notify security teams when sensitive information is detected or when activity suggests potential data leakage.

Key capabilities that support data loss prevention include:

Data classification and scanning (Premium): Automatically identifies sensitive data such as credentials, personal information, or confidential terms and applies appropriate controls.
Policy-based enforcement: Prevents risky actions like public link creation, anonymous access, or large data exports based on organizational rules.
Suspicious activity monitoring: Detects unusual behaviors such as bulk exports or access from unexpected locations.
Centralized audit logs: Provides detailed visibility into user actions to support investigation and remediation.
Strong identity controls: Enforces SSO and multi-factor authentication to ensure only authorized users can access sensitive data.

Result:
Lower risk of accidental or unauthorized data exposure across Jira and Confluence.

2. Secure Your Team’s Work Across Devices

Atlassian Guard secures teams across devices by providing a centralized, identity‑centric security layer that enforces consistent policies regardless of location, network, or device type (personal or corporate). It follows a Zero Trust model, requiring continuous verification for all users before access is granted.

Key ways Atlassian Guard secures work across devices include:

Mobile Application Management (MAM): Enables admins to enforce security controls on iOS and Android devices without requiring full device enrollment.
Data Protection Policies: Restricts actions such as copying, pasting, saving, or taking screenshots within Atlassian mobile apps like Jira and Confluence.
Authentication Policies: Enforces Single Sign-On (SSO) and two-step verification (2SV) across all devices to ensure only verified users can access company data.
Device Compliance Controls: Allows enforcement of minimum operating system versions and disk encryption, blocking access from insecure, compromised, or rooted devices.
Session Management: Provides control over session duration and enables rapid revocation of API tokens or suspension of accounts if a device is compromised.
MDM Integration: Integrates with existing mobile device management tools, such as Microsoft Intune, to align Atlassian access with broader device security policies.

These controls apply to managed accounts, allowing organizations to maintain consistent security standards across platforms while supporting flexible work models.

Result:
Consistent access control across all devices, reduced risk from compromised or unmanaged endpoints, and faster containment when device‑related security issues arise.

3. Detect Suspicious Activity and Data Misuse

Early detection is critical to limiting the impact of security incidents. Atlassian Guard continuously monitors activity across Atlassian Cloud and generates alerts when behavior matches known risk patterns. This includes authorization events, access changes, data exfiltration signals, unusual user behavior, and configuration changes across Atlassian Administration, Jira, Confluence, and Bitbucket.

Guard Detect is designed to surface meaningful security signals, not just raw activity. Alerts include context about the user, the action taken, and the affected content, allowing security or admin teams to investigate quickly and decide on next steps.

A key part of detection is identifying sensitive data that should not be stored in Atlassian products. In regulated or security‑conscious environments, the presence of credentials, financial data, or personal information can create compliance and security risk.

With Atlassian Guard, organizations can:

Receive alerts when common types of sensitive data, such as credit card numbers, API tokens, or identity information, are added to Confluence pages or Jira work items.
Create custom detection rules for organization‑specific terms, patterns, or project codenames.
Exclude specific pages or work items to reduce false positives and focus on high‑risk content.

In addition, Atlassian Guard provides organization‑wide audit logs that capture activity across all Atlassian Cloud products, including user and admin actions, authentication events, API token usage, and webhook activity.

Result:
Faster identification of risky behavior, better investigative context, and improved ability to respond before misuse becomes a security incident.

4. Reduce Shadow IT Risk

Shadow IT increases attack surface and compliance risk.

Atlassian Guard includes:

Automatic discovery of unsanctioned Atlassian products
Visibility into usage outside approved instances

Result:
Helps security teams identify unmanaged environments before they become a problem.

5. Prioritize High-Risk Threats (Premium)

Atlassian Guard Premium adds risk context to activity data so security teams can focus on what matters most, rather than reviewing large volumes of low‑value events.

By combining anomalous behavior detection with customizable detection rules, Guard surfaces alerts based on risk and relevance instead of raw activity alone. This allows teams to quickly identify genuine threats and deprioritize expected or low‑impact behavior.

Result:
Security teams spend less time triaging noise and more time responding to high‑risk threats that require action.

6. Accelerate Incident Response (Premium)

Atlassian Guard Premium accelerates incident response by shortening the time between detection and action. It does this by combining intelligent threat detection, centralized alerting, and direct integration with existing security tools. Instead of reviewing disconnected logs across systems, security teams receive timely, context‑rich alerts that support faster investigation and containment.

Guard Premium integrates directly with SIEM platforms such as Splunk and Microsoft Sentinel using webhooks. Audit logs and security alerts flow automatically into existing monitoring tools, allowing teams to correlate Atlassian activity with signals from the rest of the environment. This removes the need for manual log review and speeds up triage.

Premium also includes advanced threat detection through Guard Detect. It analyzes user behavior and system activity to identify anomalies such as unusual data exports, suspicious login patterns, or unexpected configuration changes. When risk thresholds are met, alerts are generated within minutes, not hours.

Each alert includes investigative context, such as the affected user, related actions, and the data involved. Security teams can view activity in a consolidated timeline instead of piecing together events from separate logs. This reduces investigation time and improves decision‑making.

Guard Premium supports rapid containment through built‑in remediation actions. From the alert view, teams can suspend accounts, revoke API tokens, or restrict access immediately. Data scanning and policy enforcement further reduce risk by detecting sensitive content and preventing unauthorized sharing before incidents escalate.

Result:
Lower mean time to detect (MTTD), faster investigation, and quicker containment of security incidents across Jira, Confluence, and other Atlassian Cloud products.

Why Upgrade to Atlassian Guard Premium

Atlassian Guard Premium builds on the Standard offering with advanced capabilities designed for organizations with higher security and compliance demands.

Key reasons organizations upgrade include:

Stronger protection for sensitive data
Faster and more precise threat detection
Centralized alerts and response workflows
Detailed audit trails for compliance and investigations
Integration with existing security tooling such as Microsoft, Google, and SIEM platforms

For regulated industries or large enterprises, these capabilities often move from “nice to have” to “required.”

Supporting Cloud Migration with Confidence

Security concerns are a common barrier to cloud adoption. Atlassian Guard Premium helps address those concerns by providing visibility and control during and after migration.

During cloud migrations, Guard helps organizations:

Reduce the risk of data exposure
Monitor user and admin activity closely
Enforce consistent access controls
Govern API usage as integrations shift

This makes it easier for organizations to move away from Data Center environments without sacrificing security posture.

Designed for Security‑Focused Organizations

Atlassian Guard Premium is well suited for organizations that operate in regulated, high‑risk, or complex environments.

It helps organizations:

Meet compliance and audit requirements
Strengthen confidence in cloud security
Support secure collaboration at scale
Accelerate cloud adoption responsibly

The Role of Atlas Bench

As an Atlassian Platinum Solution Partner with deep Cloud specialization, Atlas Bench helps organizations adopt Atlassian Guard in a way that is secure, intentional, and aligned with business objectives. During implementation, we configure Atlassian Guard to integrate cleanly with your identity provider and existing security tools. This includes SAML SSO, SCIM provisioning, two-step verification, external user policies, API token controls, and mobile access management. Our goal is consistent access control across Jira, Confluence, and other Atlassian Cloud products without disrupting productivity.

After deployment, Atlas Bench helps operationalize Atlassian Guard. We support incident response workflows, alert handling, and remediation processes, and we provide guidance to administrators and security teams. As your organization evolves, we continue to refine policies and detection rules so your security posture remains effective and aligned with business needs.

Interested in learning more? Contact Atlas Bench to book a complimentary consultation with our Certified Atlassian Experts.

Try Atlassian Guard Today and Transform Your Security

Atlas Bench is an Atlassian Platinum Solution Partner with deep Cloud Specialization, helping Data Center customers move beyond migration and fully transform on the Atlassian Cloud Platform. We deliver Atlassian’s System of Work end to end through four collections: Strategy, Teamwork, Service, and Software, connecting planning to execution, aligning teams around outcomes, modernizing service delivery, and accelerating software development.

We are also recognized as an Atlassian World Class Software Development Partner of the Year (Americas), and we bring AI leadership to every engagement. By leveraging Rovo for automation and purpose built agents, we reduce manual work, unlock knowledge across tools, and speed up decision making so organizations realize measurable value faster in cloud.

Key Features and Benefits of Atlassian Guard