Security incidents in collaboration tools are no longer rare. When your organization’s work lives in Jira and Confluence, the question isn’t whether you need security controls — it’s whether you have the right ones in place. Atlassian Guard is built to answer that question.
What is Atlassian Guard?
Atlassian Guard is a security product that gives IT and security admins centralized control over their Atlassian Cloud organization. It sits on top of your existing Atlassian products and adds a dedicated layer of identity management, access controls, threat detection, and data protection.
Guard covers four core areas: user management, user security, data loss prevention, and threat detection. These are capabilities that are otherwise fragmented or unavailable within individual Atlassian product settings.
Guard comes in two editions:
- Guard Standard: Core identity and access management controls
- Guard Premium: Everything in Standard, plus threat detection, extended audit logs, sensitive data detection, and data classification
Both editions are available on a free 30-day trial. If you’re on Atlassian Cloud Enterprise, Guard Standard is already included at no additional cost.
If you need more capabilities than what Guard provides, this article about Atlassian Guard and Cloud security walks through marketplace apps that bridge security gaps in Cloud.
Atlassian Guard Standard: Core Security Controls
Guard Standard is where most organizations start. It centralizes the controls that should be in place for any organization running Atlassian Cloud at scale.
Key capabilities include:
- SAML for single sign-on (SSO): Require all users to authenticate through your existing identity provider.
- SCIM automated provisioning: Automate user lifecycle management. New employees get access on day one; departing employees are deprovisioned automatically when removed from your IdP.
- Mobile app management (MAM): Set policies for how Atlassian apps behave on mobile devices, including restrictions on copy/paste, screenshots, and local data storage.
- API token controls: Get full visibility into which users have active API tokens, with the ability to revoke them centrally when needed.
- Organization audit logs: A complete log of admin activity across your Atlassian organization, useful for compliance reviews and incident investigations.
Guard Standard covers Jira, Jira Service Management, Confluence, Bitbucket, Trello, and Statuspage — the full breadth of your Atlassian Cloud footprint.
Atlassian Guard Premium: Threat Detection, Data Classification & More
Guard Premium builds on Standard and adds the capabilities security teams need to actively detect and respond to threats. If your organization handles sensitive data or operates in a regulated industry, this edition may be worth the investment.
Data Classification
Data classification in Guard lets you label content in Jira and Confluence according to its sensitivity: public, internal, confidential, restricted, or whatever scheme your organization uses.
Once you’ve classified your data, you attach policies to those levels. Block public link creation for confidential pages. Restrict exports of restricted issues. Require additional review before sharing certain content externally. Classification turns a label into an enforceable control, not just a visual tag.
Sensitive Data Detection
Guard Premium scans content in Jira and Confluence for sensitive data patterns: such as personally identifiable information (PII), credit card numbers, SSNs, and API keys. When a match is found, it surfaces as an alert rather than sitting quietly in a page or issue visible to anyone with access.
This is particularly valuable for organizations that have been on Atlassian Cloud for some time and have accumulated years of content. The scanning gives you visibility into what already exists, not just what gets created going forward.
Threat Detection with Guard Detect
Guard Detect is the active monitoring component of Guard Premium. It watches for suspicious activity across your Atlassian environment and generates alerts when something looks wrong.
Detection covers four categories:
- Authorization and access events: unexpected logins, permission escalations, unusual access patterns
- Data exfiltration events: bulk exports, unusual download volumes, mass content access
- Unusual user activity: access outside normal hours or locations, sudden spikes in activity
- App and integration changes: webhooks added or modified, third-party app configuration changes
Guard Detect monitors across Atlassian Administration, Jira, Confluence, and Bitbucket. Alerts surface in a consolidated investigation dashboard where admins can review context, assess severity, and take action, including suspending a user account directly from the alert view without switching tools.
Guard Standard vs. Guard Premium: Choosing the Right Edition
Both editions are priced per user per month. Depending on your user tier and billing cycle, Guard Standard is approximately $4.20/user/month; Guard Premium is approximately $8.18/user/month.
Guard Standard is the right starting point if:
- Your primary need is centralized IAM: SSO, SCIM, and lifecycle management
- You’re formalizing your Atlassian Cloud security posture for the first time
- You’re on Cloud Enterprise, where Standard is already included
Upgrade to Guard Premium if:
- Your organization handles sensitive data: PII, financial records, intellectual property
- You operate in a regulated industry such as healthcare, finance, legal, or government
- You have a security team that needs active alerting and detection tools
- You want to implement data classification and enforce policies based on content sensitivity
Work Out the Right Guard Setup for Your Org
Atlassian Guard is one of the most direct ways to reduce your organization’s exposure across the Atlassian Cloud environment. Whether you need SSO and SCIM or full threat detection and data classification depends on your data, your industry, and where your security program is today.
If you’d like help choosing the right edition or working through Guard licensing as part of your broader Atlassian Cloud subscription, get in touch with our team for an Atlassian Guard quote.