Atlassian Guard setup and IdP integration in Singapore and California.

Atlassian Guard is a security subscription for your Atlassian Cloud organisation that adds enterprise-grade identity management, data loss prevention, and threat detection. It provides tools for provisioning users from an identity provider, enforcing SSO, controlling authentication policies, classifying and protecting data, detecting suspicious activity, and streaming audit logs to a SIEM. Available in two plans: Guard Standard and Guard Premium.

Guard Standard covers identity and access management — SSO (SAML 2.0), SCIM user provisioning, authentication policies, API token management, data classification, and DLP policies. Guard Premium adds active threat detection and response — suspicious activity alerts, sensitive data detection, data redaction, centralised alert management, and audit log streaming to SIEM tools such as Splunk, Microsoft Sentinel, and Zscaler. Guard Premium is recommended for organisations handling sensitive or regulated data that need active monitoring and incident response.

Atlassian Guard supports any SAML 2.0-compliant IdP for SSO and any SCIM 2.0-compliant provider for user provisioning. Commonly used IdPs include Okta, Microsoft Entra ID (Azure AD), Google Workspace, OneLogin, PingIdentity, and JumpCloud. For Singapore Government organisations, TechPass (built on Entra ID) can be used as the IdP for Atlassian Cloud environments including SHIP-HATS.

SSO controls how users authenticate — instead of a separate Atlassian password, users log in through your identity provider via SAML 2.0. SCIM controls user lifecycle management — automatically creating, updating, and deactivating Atlassian accounts when users are added, changed, or removed in your IdP. Both are configured separately and work together: SCIM ensures the right accounts exist, SSO ensures they authenticate through your IdP.

Yes. Domain claiming is a prerequisite for Atlassian Guard. You must verify ownership of your organisation's email domain in Atlassian Admin before you can manage accounts on that domain, enforce authentication policies, or set up SSO and SCIM provisioning. The process involves adding a DNS TXT record or uploading an HTML file to your domain. We handle domain claiming as part of every Guard setup engagement.

Atlassian Guard lets you define separate authentication policies for managed accounts (on your claimed domain) and external users (on other domains). You can enforce SSO for internal users while allowing external collaborators to use Atlassian authentication or a separate policy — with different MFA requirements, session durations, and API token rules per policy. Designing the right external user policy is one of the most important — and most frequently overlooked — steps in a Guard implementation.

Yes — this is a Guard Premium capability. Guard Premium supports real-time audit log streaming via webhooks to tools including Splunk, Microsoft Sentinel, Google Chronicle, and Zscaler. Guard Premium threat detection alerts can also be forwarded to your security operations workflow. We configure the streaming connection, validate event delivery, and help define alert routing and escalation paths.

A Guard Standard implementation — domain claiming, IdP connection (SSO + SCIM), and authentication policy configuration — typically takes 2–4 weeks. A Guard Premium implementation adding data classification, DLP policies, threat detection configuration, and SIEM integration typically takes 4–8 weeks. Timeline depends on the complexity of your IdP environment, the number of Atlassian products in scope, and the number of user types and external collaborators to account for.