Summary
- Although Atlassian Guard is a cloud product, it now offers benefits for Data Center users thanks to an Atlassian Guard Premium integration for Data Center.
- The integration is a beta app and does not offer full Guard Premium functionality for Data Center.
- It can do two things only: centralize alerts from Data Center in the Guard Premium interface, and apply data classification levels and security policies to Data Center content.
- But it cannot scan Data Center content, detect sensitive data, or automate remediation actions against Data Center content. And you can only use the connector if you have a Cloud instance as well.
- Therefore, the Guard Premium connector is not a replacement for Data Center security products like the Data Protection & Security Toolkit app.
- The Data Protection & Security Toolkit offers content scanning, sensitive data detection, automatic remediation actions, user anonymization and ownership transfer, and built-in response automation, e.g. creating Jira tickets, adding comments, and notifying stakeholders. None of these features are available in the Guard Premium integration for Data Center.
Atlassian Guard: should Data Center users care?
Atlassian Guard is a managed security platform for Atlassian Cloud customers. So how does this affect customers on Atlassian Data Center?
For a while it didn’t. But in 2025 Atlassian released an Atlassian Guard integration for Data Center that helps protect your Data Center instances.
So now people want to understand:
- Is Atlassian Guard now available for Data Center?
- What exactly is included in the integration?
- Is Guard replacing any Data Center security tools?
- Do I need Atlassian Cloud to use Guard for Data Center?
In this article, we’ll explain what this integration is, how it helps, and what its limitations are.
We’ll also explore whether the integration competes with Data Center security tools like the Data Protection & Security Toolkit.
What is Atlassian Guard?
Atlassian Guard is Atlassian’s primary security solution for Cloud products such as Jira Cloud and Confluence Cloud. It helps IT and security teams manage who has access to Atlassian Cloud sites and gain visibility into sensitive data and security risks across their cloud environment.
The product is available in two tiers:
- Atlassian Guard Standard for identity security and access management
- Atlassian Guard Premium for threat detection and response
About Atlassian Guard Standard
Guard Standard enables users to log in to Atlassian Cloud using single sign-on (SSO) via your company’s identity provider. It also offers cross-domain identity management (SCIM), API token controls, authentication policies, and some basic tools for detecting suspicious login activity.
Guard Standard is focused on prevention of data loss by ensuring only authorized users have access to your Cloud products.
About Atlassian Guard Premium
Guard Premium shifts the focus to treatment: finding data risks and dealing with them.
It uses content scanning and automated alerts to detect suspicious behavior and sensitive data. It also allows you to classify sensitive content, apply policies to prevent unauthorized sharing or exporting, and offers some basic automated remediation such as redaction of personal information.
What is the Atlassian Guard integration for Data Center?
First, it’s worth mentioning that this is specifically an Atlassian Guard Premium connector for Data Center.
Atlassian Guard Standard is not part of it (so you don’t get any access management features like SSO).
Second, this is an app that allows you to do two things only:
- centralize alerts from your Atlassian Cloud apps and your Data Center instances in one place
- apply data classification levels and security policies to your Data Center content
The connector does not give you full Guard Premium functionality for Data Center. It’s also a beta app, which means you have to contact Atlassian to join the beta group.
Importantly, it’s aimed at hybrid-environment teams that have both Cloud and Data Center, and an active Atlassian Guard Premium subscription. A purely Data Center customer cannot run the connector.
And in fact, the integration is much more limited than Atlassian make it appear. Let’s dive into this now.
How the integration actually works, and why it’s limited
Atlassian say that the Guard Premium integration for Data Center “extends the threat surface that Guard Premium already protects in your Cloud products to safeguard your Data Center instances.”
You might assume that this means Guard Premium will protect your Data Center instances just like it protects your Cloud sites.
It doesn’t. And when it comes to the two things it does do—alert management and data classification—you don’t get anywhere near the level of functionality for Data Center as you do for Cloud:
- No content scanning
- No threat detection
- No automatic data classification at the content level
- Two security policies only
That’s not to say this integration isn’t useful. It gives organizations with hybrid Atlassian deployments consistent security governance and unified alert visibility across Cloud and Data Center, which reduces admin overhead and helps IT and security teams respond to risks more quickly.
But saying that the integration “safeguards your Data Center instances” is massively overstating it.
How the alert centralization works
The integration allows Guard Premium to ingest security alerts generated in your Data Center instances and surface them in Guard Detect, the threat detection tool within Guard Premium.
Your Data Center alerts are displayed alongside your Cloud alerts in the Guard Detect dashboard, where you can manage them by changing the status or creating a Jira work item.
But those alerts are generated in Data Center and forwarded on. They’re not generated in Guard Detect.
With your Cloud sites, Guard Detect is actively scanning for sensitive content and unusual behavior across your Jira and Confluence spaces and raising alerts when it finds something.
Guard Detect doesn’t do this for Data Center. Security alerts are raised the normal way using Data Center’s security monitoring and alerts feature. And your Data Center alerts aren’t synced between Data Center and Guard Premium either. So if you change the alert’s status in Guard Detect, it won’t reflect in Data Center.
Data Center users will be aware that the native security monitoring and alerts feature doesn’t scan for sensitive text like credit card numbers, API keys, or personal identifiable information (PII). Instead it’s looking for things like configuration and permission changes. It’s not a data protection tool.
Basically, Atlassian Data Center has no native sensitive content detector, and the Guard Premium connector doesn’t change that.
How the data classification works
This is where the Guard Premium connector reveals its strength as a data governance tool, rather than as a data protection tool.
Guard Premium lets you label Jira and Confluence content based on things like data sensitivity, data type, or regulatory requirements. You can then apply security policies based on those labels, e.g. if a page is labelled “Restricted”, it can’t be exported.
Once you’ve defined a set of classification levels in Guard Premium, the Data Center connector will automatically apply an organization-level default classification to any connected Data Center sites and their content. You can change this default for different Jira and Confluence spaces.
However, that’s the only automatic data classification that happens.
In Cloud, Guard Premium lets you create classification rules that automatically assign classifications at the content level when they detect sensitive data. For example, labelling a Confluence page as “Highly confidential” if it contains a credit card number.
In Data Center, the connector only lets you manually apply a classification level. And it only supports two policy restrictions: preventing exports and anonymous access. All other restrictions apply only to your Cloud sites and your Data Center products will ignore them.
Is the Guard Premium connector a replacement for Data Center security products?
You’ve probably realized by now, but the answer to this one is a resounding no.
All the connector really does is let you manage Data Center-generated alerts in the Guard Premium interface, and do a bit of data governance.
What it can’t do is monitor your Data Center instances, detect sensitive data, generate Data Center alerts, or automate remediation actions against your Data Center content.
Basically, it’s a hugely watered-down version of Guard Premium for Cloud.
By contrast, a Data Center security product like the Data Protection & Security Toolkit runs directly within the Data Center environment, where it can monitor, scan, and remediate Data Center content.
Comparing the Guard Premium integration with the Data Protection & Security Toolkit
The Data Protection & Security Toolkit is an Atlassian Marketplace app that helps organizations comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). It can be deployed directly in Data Center, which means it can act on your Data Center content without any reliance on a separate cloud governance layer.
This means you don’t need an Atlassian Cloud subscription and you don’t need to be a hybrid-environment org. You can be Data Center only, with no cloud footprint.
Most importantly, it offers automated content scanning and remediation capabilities, which the Atlassian Guard Premium connector for Data Center doesn’t. You can:
- Run targeted and scheduled scans of your Data Center content, including historical data. You can select which fields, work items, pages, and spaces across Jira and Confluence should be scanned and which should be ignored.
- Receive notifications when sensitive data is found or created.
- Mask or replace with text any sensitive data detected in Data Center.
- Anonymize specific users across all content, i.e. automatically remove all mentions of a user from your Confluence pages and Jira tickets.
- Transfer ownership of content by automatically replacing an inactive user with an active one.
- Anonymize content, i.e. choose specific fields, filters, work items, pages, or spaces to anonymize.
- Automatically respond to detections by labelling content, adding comments, restricting access to pages, and creating Jira work items.
As a Data Center security product built for GDPR compliance, the Data Protection & Security Toolkit is more powerful than the Guard Premium connector on almost every level.
The Guard Premium connector is also very expensive when you factor in needing a full Guard Premium Cloud license. Here is a table illustrating the cost differences between Guard Premium and the Data Protection & Security Toolkit, showing how much you can save.
And what if you are a hybrid team with both Cloud and Data Center sites?
The Guard Premium connector is targeted at hybrid-environment teams and organizations only. You can’t run it unless you have both Cloud and Data Center sites.
The Data Protection & Security Toolkit is targeted at Data Center-only teams, Cloud-only teams, AND hybrid organizations. This is because these are Data Center and Cloud versions of the app. You can find out more about the Cloud version and how it compares to Atlassian Guard Premium in our earlier blog.
A summary of Atlassian Guard Premium vs Data Protection & Security Toolkit
Here is a table to summarize the differences between the Data Protection & Security Toolkit and the Atlassian Guard Premium integration for Data Center.
So if you want comprehensive data protection while saving thousands of dollars, try the Data Protection & Security Toolkit free for one month.
Try the Data Protection & Security Toolkit for Jira Try the Data Protection & Security Toolkit for Confluence
