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How to realise a classified project in Jira?

Fabian

Hi all,

we have a project / helpdesk (self hosted) that is handling "secret" information. Therefore we want to eliminate the possibility for jira-admins to give themselves access to this specific project.

Only users with proper clearance should have access to that project.

According to Atlassian it is not possible (atm) to restrict jira-admins from accessing projects they should have no access to.

We already thought about to host a second jira instance with own permission scheme (with only one jira-admin that has the clearance) but that seems to be quite complicated, as we need the user-base of the existing instance.

Does anyone have a suggestion how we could do that?

Any help is much appreciated!

Best,

Fabian

Accepted answers

All comments

Bastian Stehmann

Hi @Fabian,

welcome to this community.

It is right, that a admin always can access all projects (he will have to to do his work). But you can use issue security to set security levels on that issues. If you do not add the Admins to the security levels, they won't be able to see the issues, although they can access the project.

Yogesh Mude_u145qk

Hi @Fabian,

Why should you not think about issue security level?

Issue security schemes and let you control which user or group of users can view an issue. When an issue security scheme is associated with a project, its security levels can be applied to issues in that project.

Monika Danielsson

Hi,

The Jira administrators can always give themselves access to projects, by adding themselves to a role with enough privileges. However, sometimes it's enough that these things are logged (and the people in question are aware of that). I don't know if that's ok in your case?

If you make sure these people cannot tamper with the Audit log data (make sure they cannot access the database, for example), then you could depend on security levels, permissions, and all that, to keep them out of the data.

Fabian

Hi @Bastian Stehmann,

thanks for the quick reply!

I'll look into that in our test environment.

I'm just curious, can admins not add themselves to one of the security levels and get to see the issues again?

Fabian

Hi @Yogesh Mude,

thanks for the hint!

Do you know if jira-admins can change the issue security scheme? We really want to make sure that they can't grant themselves access to issues in this project.

Nic Brough -Adaptavist-

An admin can always bypass all of this (without database access. You should never give anyone any database access, it's almost always the wrong answer)

Admins can change security schemes, let themselves into the various levels and turn off the audit log if they want.

You have to trust the admins.

Fabian

Hi @Monika Danielsson,

you are right, that is an option we have thought of.

Unfortunately some of the jira-admins have also access to the underlying database, which makes this even more complicated.

Therefore we are thinking about a second isolated jira instance.

Nic Brough -Adaptavist-

Yes, they can. You have to be able to trust that they won't (or don't care about the secrets)

Fabian

Thanks for the feedback so far, I think in our current environment this is not possible.

@Nic Brough -Adaptavist-do you think we could host a second jira instance with only that project, to which we assign one trusted admin?

The only thing would be could we establish a connection between both instances so that existing users could create tickets there?

Bastian Stehmann

Nic is right, they can change it. But if you fear, that your Admins will change the scheme to get access, get that secret data and then change it back so that it is not obvious that they did, you should maybe think of the kind of people that are administering your system.

Bastian Stehmann

You can use your existing Jira as User Database. That way all exisiting users can log in (if you give them application access.

You can set permissions, so that the users are able to create new issues in that project, but do not have any other permission.

But you should have in mind, that you will need a second Jira license for all that users...

Nic Brough -Adaptavist-

Yes, if you have trust issues with your administrators, your only option is another Jira.

Especially if a user has any access to the database - that renders all your permissions and schemes completely worthless, as they'll be able to see anything they want.

I tend to agree with @Bastian Stehmann on the thing about trust. If I didn't trust an admin not to look at (or at least ignore) stuff the non-admins have restricted, then I'm not sure I'd trust them with any admin access either.

But I know you can't always do that. So, yes, a separate Jira might do it.

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