Mail traffic after configuration

[Rinaldo Beck]

Technical question: this week we installed the on premise server. after initial configuration we noticed that a lot of mail traffic from jiraservicedesk to SymantecCloud. What is the cause of this traffic? Why is there a connection with Symantec?

[Andy Heinzer]

Hi Rinaldo,

I'm not sure yet how to best explain these connections yet, but I have a hunch.  With Jira and Jira Service Desk there are two different types of connections that would have the Jira application establishing Mail connections:  Incoming mail and outgoing mail.

The incoming mail to Jira are message end users send to a mailbox, and Jira checks that mailbox, typically on an interval of once a minute, IIRC.   These message get processed into update for Jira issues.  Each service desk project could have a different mail handler.  This would be in the Project settings -> Email requests or the URL /servicedesk/admin/{PROJECTKEY}/email-settings

The outgoing mail are predominately notifications of events that are sent out to Jira users when changes happen, issues created, changed, transitioned, new comments, etc).   In order for these to send, you have to define an SMTP outgoing mail server.  You can do this by going to the Gear Icon -> System -> Ougoing Mail or the URL /secure/admin/OutgoingMailServers.jspa

I'd be interested to learn more about the settings you have in both sets of locations.   Depending on the inbox being checked for new messages and the SMTP outgoing server used, perhaps one or more of these is setup to have connections go through this Symantec service.  I'm not familiar with this service but it appears to be designed to

Identify targeted attacks and protect email against threats, user error, and data leakage.

https://www.symantec.com/products/messaging-security

I'm betting that your mail administrator has setup either the mailbox and/or the outgoing SMTP server to a hostname that then randomly selects one of the load balanced mail hosts to establish these connections.  I don't think Jira is doing anything malicious, but I'm more inclined to believe that the SMTP or inbox in use is behind this Symantec service and Jira has to work through it to get those messages or send those messages depending on the scenario.

Andy

[Rinaldo Beck]

Hello Andy, thx for your response. I Will talk with my team and send you our feedback.