The audit log shows the author of an entry as "JIRA". What does that mean?

[Nicholas Chammas]

I'm looking at the audit log and I see that most entries have an author that refers to a real JIRA user. However, some entries have an author of "JIRA".

What does this mean? Does it mean the action was not triggered by a person?

In my case I'm trying to track down who deleted an entire JIRA project. Knowing that the author is "JIRA" is not helpful.

[Betty Quay]

Thanks for the information - at least I know I am not going crazy now

However, I am not sure one can call something an "audit" if you the audit trail not show who (a real person) made the change.  Especially for something as important as a user, group or project level change.  

This is a big security issue for JIRA frankly.

[Maria Bodkin]

There's not one reply from Atlassian.  Com'on Guys.  This issue needs to be fixed.  What is an Audit log without the user name who made the change?

[Piotr Drozdowski]

Its almost end of 2019 and this bug is still there, great work Atlassian...

[Prabha Dias]

The help doc says that there is a known issue where the author does not show for user management events.  

"There is a known issue which prevents the Author field from displaying the username for changes that were made in the user management pages in Jira cloud applications (including changes to users, groups, and application access). For example, events such as users being created or users being assigned to groups will not include the username of the user who made that change."

Is on this page:

https://confluence.atlassian.com/adminjiracloud/auditing-in-jira-applications-818578846.html

[Raul MrAddon]

The bug still in Jira 7.13.1 we have some users in the audit log inactivated using the user "JIRA" .... super big bug security issue

[Andrea Carl]

I also have a "JIRA" user showing in my audit file for deleting a project - even though I was the one who deleted the project.  I would see if Atlassian can get you a detailed log file - that may help.