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Getting started with Guard
The first thing you need to know about Guard is that it is designed to cover your Atlassian cloud products. Before you start using Guard, you need to verify your organization’s domain(s) and claim its accounts. Make sure to contact stakeholders, admins, and teams using Atlassian cloud products, via email or other communication channels, so they are aware that their accounts will become managed.
- Confirm or verify your domain(s): Verifying your domain(s) will prove you own it and allows you to take control of your accounts.
- Claim your accounts: Manage users more effectively and apply security settings automatically at scale by claiming accounts.
- Start your free 30-day trial to set up Guard. You need to be an organization admin to start a trial.
Next, we'll introduce essential concepts and supporting Guard capabilities that will help you develop a layered security strategy to safeguard your organization.
Identity and access management
Identity and access management (IAM) is a cybersecurity framework that encompasses business processes, policies, and technologies to manage digital identities and control access to company resources. IAM ensures the right individuals have the appropriate access to technology resources, enhancing security and compliance.
Manage how users log in with authentication policies
A strong authentication policy can help prevent the risk of compromised accounts from accessing your data. Since teams and users can access a variety of tools and information, you have the control to make different requirements apply to different sets of users.
Authentication policy capabilities include:
- Enforce two-step verification or single sign-on
- Create different authentication policies for different cohorts of users
- Create authentication policy for external users
- Get alerts when authentication policies are changed (Premium only)
Automatically provision users
Avoid manual, error-prone processes by connecting to your existing identity provider to automate user provisioning. By specifying a SCIM schema, you can automatically create accounts and update group memberships, providing your users with the right product access for their role or business unit. By automatically removing users when they leave your organization, you avoid paying for users who no longer need access.
User provisioning capabilities include:
- Connect an identity provider and automatically provision users
- Automatic sync new users, removes old users, and updates group memberships for existing users
Control user API tokens
User API tokens are used to perform actions using the API. They are tied to individual users, and if compromised, they can present a huge risk to your organization. As an admin, you can gain control and visibility into the user API token lifecycle with Guard.
API token control capabilities include:
- Revoke API tokens so they can no longer be used
- Get alerts when tokens are created or revoked (Premium only)
Data loss prevention
Data loss prevention (DLP) is a security strategy that uses tools and practices to identify and protect sensitive information from unauthorized access or misuse. The primary goal is to prevent loss, theft, or exposure of sensitive data like personally identifiable information (PII), financial data, and intellectual property.
Use security policies to reduce the risk of data loss
Loss of sensitive company data can be disastrous for an organization. Jira and Confluence capabilities designed to aid collaboration, such as export, public links, and public access, can become a risk when handling confidential, commercially sensitive, or otherwise mission-critical user-generated content.
Data security and mobile app management (MAM) policies help you govern how users, apps, and people outside of your organization interact with content, such as Confluence pages and Jira issues, and reduces the risk of data leaving the applications you control.
Data security and mobile policy capabilities include:
- Create data security policies to restrict actions like export, public links, and anonymous access
- Use a mobile app policy to block screenshots, screen recording, downloads, and more
- Apply data security policies to classified data (Premium only)
Classify your data based on sensitivity levels
Data classification is the process of labeling information. It serves as the foundation of a data governance strategy in many organizations, particularly those that need to comply with government or other regulatory requirements. By adding classification levels with Guard, your space and project admins can set a default level for their space or project, and users can classify individual pages and issues.
Data classification capabilities, exclusive to Guard Premium, include:
- Manage organization-wide classification levels
- Apply classification levels to Confluence and Jira content
- Use data security policies to block actions like export, public links, and more for classified content
- Get an alert when the classification level of content changes
Organization insights and audit logs
Insights and audit logs give you visibility into your organization to understand user behavior and optimize product access allocation as well as provide you with a transparent, traceable record of significant actions taken within your organization.
Gain insights into product usage and security practices
As an admin, you may struggle with resource allocation or security risk management due to limited visibility into how your teams are using Atlassian cloud products. Guard gives you visibility into your organization’s product usage, shadow IT, and users’ security posture, so you can make informed, data-driven decisions.
Capabilities that enhance visibility include:
- Get insights into active users and authentication methods
- View products created by managed users, administered outside of your organization
Access organization-wide audit logs
When it comes to diagnosing issues or answering questions around user activity in detail, you need to be able to access and examine that data easily. With audit logs in Guard, you can track key activities that occur within your Atlassian organization. Use these activities to diagnose problems or questions related to user details, product access, managed accounts, and organization settings.
Audit log capabilities include:
- View audit logs for administrator activity, such as changes to user access
- View audit logs for user-created activity (Premium only)
- Track user API token usage (Premium only)
- Use webhooks to send audit log events to a third-party tool (Premium only)
Threat detection
Threat detection is a cybersecurity process that involves identifying, monitoring, and responding to potential threats to an organization. It encompasses various techniques and tools to detect suspicious activities, anomalies, and potential data loss.
Detect suspicious user activity
Get alerts when certain types of user activity are detected, such as authorization and access events, data exfiltration events, product and integration configuration changes across Atlassian Administration, Jira, and Confluence.
With alerts, you have the information you and your security team need to thoroughly investigate the alert and remediate, if necessary.
Activity detection capabilities, exclusive to Guard Premium, include:
- Get an alert when detection criteria is met
- Send alerts to your existing SIEM or messaging tool
- Exclude specific users to reduce the number of false positive alerts
Detect sensitive data and data misuse
When work happens in Confluence and Jira, there’s always a chance someone includes data that shouldn’t be stored in your Atlassian cloud products, such as credit card numbers, API tokens, or AWS access keys.
Get alerts when certain types of sensitive data are added to a page or issue, allowing your security team to investigate and remove the data if appropriate.
Content scanning capabilities, exclusive to Guard Premium, include:
- Get alerts when common types of sensitive data are added
- Create custom detections for terms, phrases, and patterns
- Exclude selected pages or issues to reduce the number of false positive alerts
- Integrate with your existing SIEM or other tools
Investigation and remediation
Investigation and remediation are critical steps in cybersecurity incident response. It involves the process of identifying, analyzing, and understanding the nature and scope of a security incident, followed by taking any necessary actions to resolve the incident and mitigate its impact on the organization.
Respond to alerts
Security risks can go unnoticed and it can escalate and cause significant harm to your organization if it is not promptly identified and addressed. As an admin or security professional, you can quickly identify risks and take immediate action to prevent further damage. By regularly investigating alerts, you can fine-tune security measures and policies for your organization.
Investigation capabilities, exclusive to Guard Premium, include:
- Use suggested investigation steps to better understand the alert
- View information about the actor, to help determine whether the activity is suspicious
- See contextual data on the alert and the actor, such as an activity timeline panel
Remediation actions
When a security threat arises, a delayed response can increase the risk and impact of the threat. To help streamline your response, each alert has its own set of recommended remediation steps. These are provided to help your team act quickly to minimize the security impact of the potentially risky activity or data misuse.
Remediation capabilities, exclusive to Guard Premium, include:
- Use suggested remediation steps to streamline your response
- Take immediate steps to stop any further activity from happening, such as suspending the actor
- Update policies and settings to strengthen enforcement
- Automate common remediation actions, such as restricting the page or redacting data (coming soon)