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Layer 1 of four

Identity and Access

Identity is the layer that records who and what can reach the estate, from human accounts to service accounts, keys, and agents. Atlas Bench designs and cleans up that model across Okta and Atlassian Guard, so access can be proven rather than assumed.

Human and non-human identity, SSO, SCIM, least privilege, access reviews, Guard cleanup, Agent SSO readiness.

identity owner expires one owner recorded, five unaccounted L1 L2 L3 L4

The problem

Identity is the layer everything else rests on, and it is usually the last one anybody owns. Accounts arrive through acquisitions, contractor onboarding, and tools bought by a single team. Groups get created for a project and outlive it. By the time a directory is connected to the work platform, nobody can say from memory who holds admin, which accounts belong to people who left, or which integrations are authenticating as a human.

That uncertainty does not stay in the identity layer. It surfaces as a failed access review, a migration that cannot map users cleanly, a permission scheme nobody will touch because the blast radius is unknown, and now as agents that need their own identity and inherit whatever the humans already had. Every one of those is cheaper to fix as an identity problem than as the thing it turns into.

What we do at this layer.

Identity and access

Identity architecture for human and machine identities across Okta and Atlassian Guard: SSO, SCIM, permission design, and Agent SSO readiness.

Guard cleanup and access reviews

Guard cleanup and access reviews: licensed users reconciled against real people and systems, then kept that way by a review that produces evidence.

What we work in at this layer.

Atlassian

Guard

What Atlas Bench does with Atlassian Guard: SSO, SCIM provisioning, authentication policy, permission design, and cleanup that makes the user count hold.

Okta

Adaptive MFA

What Atlas Bench does with Okta Adaptive MFA: designing verification policy by population, starting with privileged access.

API Access Management

What Atlas Bench does with Okta API Access Management: inventorying machine callers and scoping the tokens they hold.

Cross App Access

What Atlas Bench does with Okta Cross App Access: replacing ad-hoc integration consent with policy the identity provider enforces.

Device Access

What Atlas Bench does with Okta Device Access: policy design and the exception paths that decide whether it survives contact with contractors.

Identity Governance

What Atlas Bench does with Okta Identity Governance: designing and running the access certification cycle that produces audit evidence.

Lifecycle Management

What Atlas Bench does with Okta Lifecycle Management: directory-driven provisioning so joiners, movers, and leavers change access automatically.

Okta for AI Agents

What Atlas Bench does with Okta for AI Agents: giving non-human identities an owner, a scope, and a lifecycle before an agent rollout.

Privileged Access

What Atlas Bench does with Okta Privileged Access: finding the privileged population and designing time-bounded elevation with a record.

Single Sign-On

What Atlas Bench does with Okta Single Sign-On: federating the whole estate so offboarding actually closes every path.

Universal Directory

What Atlas Bench does with Okta Universal Directory: attribute design that drives group membership and provisioning across the estate.

AWS

IAM Identity Center

What Atlas Bench does with AWS IAM Identity Center: federating AWS access to one directory so reviews and offboarding cover it.

Microsoft Azure

Microsoft Entra Agent ID

What Atlas Bench does with Microsoft Entra Agent ID: agent identity in the directory of record, with scope, ownership, and review.

Microsoft Entra ID

What Atlas Bench does with Microsoft Entra ID: making it authoritative across the Atlassian estate, with group design and access reviews.
what one row of an access review looks like 
identity     svc-jira-sync
class        non-human
owner        platform engineering
source       okta, scim provisioned
grants       jira-admin, confluence-admin
decision     renew, scope reduced to jira-admin

Recent from the blog on this layer.

March 31, 2026

Atlassian Guard Has a New Data Security Policy

Learn how Atlassian Guard's new unified data security policy simplifies enterprise-wide protection across Jira and Confluence.

 January 6, 2026

Atlassian Guard Premium Overview

Atlassian Guard Premium unifies identity, threat detection and data‑loss prevention in the cloud.

 January 6, 2026

Atlassian Government Cloud and Isolated Cloud Explained

Atlassian’s new Government Cloud and Isolated Cloud empower government agencies.

All posts

featured guide

When Atlassian accounts are not tied to your identity provider, people who have left the company can still log in with an old Atlassian password, and they keep using a license. Enforcing SSO through Okta and turning on user provisioning closes that gap first, and then standard groups let you control access by app and by space.

Read the guide

Recent resources

The other three layers.

One accountable system of work. Every layer is a front door to the rest.

Agents and Automation

Rovo, Agents in Jira, Forge, MCP with Claude and Copilot, agent lifecycle, usage and cost governance.

Governance and Change

Permission architecture, audit and compliance, ITSM and change control, change management, strategic reporting and budgets.

Platform and Migration

Migration of every kind, tool consolidation, licensing, standardization, the system of work.

Find out who can reach what.

Fixed scope. The assessment starts at the identity layer: human and non-human access, the accounts nobody owns, and what has to be true before an agent gets one. You get the findings, the ownership gaps, and the order to close them in.

Book the assessment

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