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Identity and access

The count on the invoice should match the people who work here.

Guard is the org-level layer that holds single sign-on, SCIM provisioning, authentication policies, and the controls that apply across every Atlassian product in the estate. Our work is SSO, SCIM provisioning, authentication policy, permission design, and the cleanup that makes the user count defensible.

Guard carries single sign-on, directory provisioning, and authentication policy across the Atlassian estate. We design that model, clean up what has accumulated, and produce the evidence a review asks for.

What it is

Guard is the org-level layer that holds single sign-on, SCIM provisioning, authentication policies, and the controls that apply across every Atlassian product in the estate.

It is for organizations that already run an identity provider and need Atlassian to obey it, rather than to maintain a second, quietly divergent list of who has access.

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

What it does

Single sign-on across the estate

Authentication moves to your identity provider, so leaving the company actually removes access.

Directory-driven provisioning

SCIM group synchronization means joiners, movers, and leavers change access without a ticket.

Authentication policy by population

Employees, external vendors, and service accounts can be held to different rules rather than one compromise.

Evidence for review

Who holds what, and who approved it, becomes a report rather than a meeting.

Where it fits

L1, identity and access. This is the bottom of the Stack, and everything above it inherits whatever it decides. A migration, a service desk, a portfolio roll-up, and an agent rollout all resolve access through this layer, which is why a gap here is never contained to this layer.

Where it earns its place

A carrier standing up new squads

New projects need group-based provisioning from the first day, or the permission exceptions start immediately and never stop.

An organization after a Data Center migration

A licensed count that exceeds headcount is the usual finding, and it is a licensing conversation and a security one at the same time.

An estate with external vendors in it

Vendor identity carried on group attributes is the difference between a policy you can enforce and one you can describe.

Proof

109:1

Machine identities per human in the enterprise, up from 45:1 two years earlier.

Palo Alto Networks, 2026 Identity Security Landscape, 2,930 respondents. Earlier ratios: CyberArk Identity Security Threat Landscape, 2024 and 2025.

9 in 10

Organizations that had a successful identity-related breach in the last twelve months.

Palo Alto Networks, 2026 Identity Security Landscape, 2,930 respondents.

81%

Of security leaders worry about excessive access held by non-human identities.

Okta Global CISO Insights, 2026.

Questions we get

We already have Okta. Does Guard duplicate it?
No. Okta decides who someone is. Guard is how Atlassian obeys that decision, and where Atlassian-specific policy and permissions live. The two get configured as one model.
Is this a licensing purchase or a project?
Both, and they are usually confused for each other. Buying Guard does not produce a permission model. The configuration and the cleanup are the work.
What usually turns up in the cleanup?
Accounts belonging to people who have left, duplicates created during a migration, service accounts consuming a licensed seat, and groups nobody can name an owner for.
How long before it is defensible?
The inventory and design take a few weeks. Rollout runs group by group, highest risk first. The first access review is the point at which it becomes evidence rather than intent.

Licensing

Guard is licensed against your user count, which is exactly the number the cleanup tends to change, so the audit is worth running before the renewal rather than after. That reconciliation sits with the rest of the estate in licensing and renewals.

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.