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Introducing a new level of control over anonymous access in Confluence

Cadence Hsu

We're excited to introduce a new level of control for Confluence admins: you can now ensure that when anonymous access is turned off at the site level, no space can override it.

Anonymous access lets you share content from selected spaces with anyone who needs it, inside or outside your organization. Learn more about anonymous access. Until now, individual spaces could still enable anonymous access even when it was turned off for their site, which could lead to content being visible beyond a site admin’s intended audience.

This update is available for all paid Confluence Cloud customers on roles-based access, giving Confluence admins a clear, centralized way to ensure site-wide anonymous access settings are always enforced.

Not using roles yet? Visit the Atlassian Cloud Roadmap for details on when role-based access control will reach all sites.

What's new

Centralized control for site and space anonymous access

From Confluence administration, site admins can now prevent spaces from enabling anonymous access when it’s off for the site. This also automatically turns off anonymous access for any spaces that had it enabled.

Space settings that match your site policy

Space admins can no longer override a site’s anonymous access settings – when anonymous access is off for the site, spaces are blocked from using the feature.

New sites enforce this behavior automatically

For new Confluence Cloud sites, turning off anonymous access for your site means it's off everywhere. No space can override that setting independently.

Learn more about anonymous access

Dive into the documentation:

This new level of control will be gradually enabled across all Confluence Cloud sites, and site admins can opt in starting today. We welcome comments, questions, and feedback - don’t hesitate to reach out!

Cheers!

The Confluence Permissions team

Comments

Tomislav Tobijas

I'll quote @Darryl Lee - wasn't this already the case? Never thought you could override the site configuration with the space level one? 😦

Belinda M

About time!! We've only been waiting for this forever! We've been doing manual checks 2 to 3 times a week via the Audit logs!
Thank you!!

James O_Connor_o89ye8

I agree with @Tomislav Tobijas - I totally thought this was already the case!

The change hasn't been rolled out to our site yet - how do we opt in?

Rune Rasmussen

Can you confirm whether this will have any effect on the Granting unlicensed (internal) access solution?

Josh

Hi @Cadence Hsu . You mentioned "this update is available for all paid Confluence Cloud customers on roles-based access". Does this mean that customers not on role-based access will not be able to close this gap?

Cadence Hsu

Hi @Tomislav Tobijas @James O_Connor, and @Rune Rasmussen great question!

To clarify: when anonymous access is off at the site level, no unauthenticated users can access your content. That hasn't changed.

The issue was that before this update, spaces could still enable anonymous access even when it was turned off globally. In that scenario, the space became accessible to any logged-in user on the site.

With this update, Confluence admins can now prevent spaces from enabling anonymous access when it's off at the site level, closing that gap entirely.

@James O_Connor — this is available for paid Confluence Cloud customers on roles-based access. If your site isn't on roles yet, you can opt in via the New features section of Confluence administration! If your site is on release tracks, that change won't be available yet but you can open a support ticket to start using roles. Learn more about roles here

Cadence Hsu

Hi @Josh - yes, this update is currently only available on sites with role-based access. However, roles will be reaching all sites soon – the Atlassian Cloud Roadmap has more information on the timeline. If your site isn't on roles and you'd like access sooner, you can opt in today via the New features section of Confluence administration.

Rick Westbrock

The issue was that before this update, spaces could still enable anonymous access even when it was turned off globally. In that scenario, the space became accessible to any logged-in user on the site.'

But a logged-in user would not be considered as anonymous would they? Granting access to any logged-in user is something different but I would not expect that particular side effect if I were to enable anonymous access at the space level.

Fazila Ashraf

@Cadence Hsu , we have adopted the current setup and utilised https://support.atlassian.com/confluence/kb/granting-unlicensed-internal-access-to-confluence-cloud/ org wide .

Changes to this setting will be a big blocker to our company. Could we opt to stay in the current setting please?

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