Atlassian Guard for unified authentication between Jira Align and Jira Cloud

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Authenticate once, securely and efficiently

Say goodbye to repetitive logins when transitioning between Jira Align and Jira. For Jira Align customers subscribed to Atlassian Guard, you now have the option to set up Jira Align to use your Atlassian account details for logging in. SAML single sign-on (SSO) allows users to authenticate to Atlassian cloud products through a company's existing identity provider, meaning users access multiple products with the same set of credentials while using a simplified and more secure method of authentication than just a username and password.

Refresh: What is Atlassian Guard?

Atlassian Guard helps organizations manage users and secure their Atlassian Cloud products, offering a range of capabilities like identity and access management, data classification, threat detection and investigation, and audit logging.

Atlassian Guard is available in two plans: Standard and Premium. The Standard plan was formerly known as Atlassian Access. The Cloud Enterprise plan includes Atlassian Guard Standard at no extra cost.

For SSO, Atlassian Guard integrates with a company's identity provider to provide a simple, seamless authentication process for employees and customers to access Atlassian cloud products.

Flow faster across Jira Align and Jira, with less friction and more collaboration

Avoid falling victim to the toggling tax and stay in your flow. Seamlessly switch between Jira Align and Atlassian Cloud products—minimizing interruptions in workflow, idea generation, and collaboration.

With this release, you will also be able to use Atlassian API tokens to authenticate with the Jira Align APIs, giving you access to the latest and greatest security features.

This integration is available for Jira Align customers with Atlassian Guard Standard or Premium, or those with an Atlassian Cloud Enterprise plan (which is inclusive of Guard Standard). We recommend using this as an alternative authentication method over the Jira Align single sign-on (SSO) and manual sign-in.

Next steps

Ready to get started? If you’re a Jira Align customer new to using Atlassian Guard, contact your Atlassian Sales team or partner reseller to explore the advantages of utilizing Atlassian Guard for authentication and how to get a subscription.

If you’re a Jira Align customer and are already using Atlassian Guard, you can get started now! You’ll need to change your authentication method in your security settings. Get a step-by-step walk through in the Knowledge Base article – check it out and drop any questions in the comments!

[Samit Mehta]

@Sam Tsubota it wasn't clear from this article or the Knowledge Base article, what would be the process for adding/removing users with Atlassian Guard for the following three scenarios where the client is currently using an Identity Provider and have already set up Jira Align SSO configuration to work with the Identity Provider:

• new Jira Align only users (don't have an existing Atlassian Account ID and not using Jira)
• Jira users (existing Atlassian Account ID) needing access to Jira Align
• Jira users that have been added in as Integrated Users through the Jira - Jira Align integration

Will the users added as Integrated User be able to login into Jira Align once their account is automatically created in Jira Align? Currently, client has a process established where the user (even the automatically added Integrated Users) has to be approved in their Identity Provider to get access to Jira Align.

[Sam Tsubota]

@Samit Mehta This doesn't add/remove users from Atlassian Guard. Jira Align user accounts will need to be create with email addresses that match a corresponding Atlassian account. And users must be in Atlassian Guard. Integrated users have user accounts automatically created in Jira Align through the Jira Connector. So if the integrated user is already in Atlassian Guard because they have access to JSW, then they will be able to log into Jira Align via Guard. 

[Isaac Greenberg]

For users that already have SSO set up for Align without Guard, is there any immediate benefit to switching to use Guard?

[Sam Tsubota]

@Isaac Greenberg Yes, the immediate benefit that users will notice when switching to Atlassian Guard is when switching between other Atlassian cloud products and Jira Align.  Users won't have to go through the Jira Align login if they already authenticated through Atlassian Guard. 

There are other additional benefits of using Atlassian Guard with Jira Align which are the following:

1. You can use the Atlassian API tokens with the Jira Align APIs. The Atlassian API tokens have security controls like that revoking, blocking, auditing and soon expiration which the Jira Align API tokens lack.
2. You will be able to take advantage of new Atlassian platform features within Jira Align as they get rolled out in the future such as smart links. 

[Isaac Greenberg]

Thanks @Sam Tsubota, for the API tokens, would admins then be able to prevent users from creating them in Align?

[Sam Tsubota]

@Isaac Greenberg In Jira Align there aren't any controls to prevent users from creating API tokens. In Atlassian Guard, there are API token controls that enable Jira org administrators to prevent users from creating API tokens. https://www.atlassian.com/software/guard/guide/api-token-controls