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World desk6 min

How to Migrate Atlassian Data Center to Cloud Without Losing Security Controls

A secure Atlassian migration takes more than moving Jira or Confluence data. Inventory controls, test the Cloud configuration, and verify access, apps, audit coverage, and residency before cutover.
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You can reduce the risk of losing security controls during an Atlassian Data Center migration by treating security as a parallel workstream—not as something the migration assistant will transfer automatically. Inventory the controls you rely on, run a test migration, deliberately configure the Cloud equivalents, and verify them before cutover. Jira and Confluence Cloud Migration Assistants provide assessments and migration checks, but identity, app behavior, audit visibility, network rules, and data residency still need product- and configuration-specific review.

What should you verify before you start?

Build a control inventory for the Data Center source and the Cloud destination. For each item, record the current setting, the intended Cloud setting or procedure, how you will test it, who owns the check, and who approves the result. This creates an evidence trail for decisions and exceptions instead of relying on an assumption that a setting transferred.

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Control area Record and plan for
Identity and access Authentication provider, user directories, groups, privileged roles, account lifecycle, and which groups receive product access.
Content and sharing Public access rules, sensitive spaces or projects, and any access exceptions that need review in Cloud.
Apps and integrations Installed Marketplace apps, app permissions, secrets, external integrations, and the audit coverage each app provides.
Operations and governance Audit and monitoring expectations, network restrictions, retention needs, and geographic or residency obligations.

Classify each control as transferred, reconfigured, replaced by a Cloud feature, or handled by a compensating procedure. Use the Jira or Confluence assistant’s assessments and checks as inputs to this inventory, not as proof that every app-specific or Cloud security setting has been addressed. Atlassian’s guides cover user migration, app assessment, and the Jira pre-migration checklist.

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How do you prepare access, users, and network rules?

Confirm the people and permissions required to run the migration

For Jira migrations, Atlassian specifies that the migration runner needs system administrator access on the source and organization administrator access on the destination. The Jira checklist also calls out access to temporary export files and permissions for selected boards and filters. Check those requirements against the source and target before starting; do not assume an account that can administer Jira on one side has the required rights on the other. See Atlassian’s Jira pre-migration checklist and trust and security FAQs.

Review users, groups, and application access

Use the assistant’s user assessment, review and trust the relevant email domains, and decide how to resolve duplicate or conflicting group names. Where it suits the migration plan, migrate users and groups before other data. Then verify which migrated groups receive application access in Cloud; moving a group is not the same as confirming that its members have the intended product access. Atlassian’s user migration guidance describes the user and group workstream.

Make the migration path reachable without broadening access unnecessarily

Confirm that firewalls or proxies allow the Atlassian domains and IP addresses required for migration. Treat this as a scoped migration prerequisite: document any temporary rule, its owner, and when it should be reviewed or removed. Use the assistant installation and migration checklist guidance for the current requirements rather than relying on an old allowlist: Jira assistant installation and Jira pre-migration checklist.

How should you handle Marketplace apps?

Plan each installed app as its own migration workstream. An app’s configuration, data, permissions, integrations, and audit behavior may not follow the same path as Jira or Confluence data.

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  1. List the installed apps and identify whether each has a Cloud equivalent.
  2. Use Atlassian’s app assessment guidance to determine what is supported, then ask each vendor whether its data migrates through the assistant or requires a separate process.
  3. Include app-specific permissions, secrets, integrations, and audit coverage in the test plan.
  4. After migration, test the Cloud app with representative users and verify its access rules and connected systems.

Atlassian recommends assessing apps and consulting vendors about migration support; it does not establish that every app or its data will migrate through the product assistant. See App assessment and migration.

Why run a test migration before production?

A trial is the point to discover mismatches while there is still time to resolve them. Atlassian recommends a trial run and identifies timeline and downtime planning, data validation, user acceptance testing (UAT), issue discovery, and launch preparation as reasons to test. If your organization uses Guard Standard, Atlassian’s test guidance describes trying SSO, provisioning, and audit logging during the trial; confirm that the plan and policies you intend to use are available for your organization. Read Test your migration to cloud.

  • Have representative users test access to the projects, spaces, and apps they need.
  • Verify expected group-to-product access, administrator membership, login, and provisioning behavior.
  • Check app behavior, integrations, audit visibility, and the controls that depend on network access.
  • Compare migrated content and configuration with the source, record discrepancies, and assign an owner and resolution before production.

Which Cloud security controls need deliberate configuration?

Identity, SSO, provisioning, and multifactor authentication

Do not treat the source authentication setup as evidence that the same policy is active in Cloud. Confirm how users authenticate, how accounts and groups are provisioned, and how multifactor requirements are enforced. Atlassian documents SAML single sign-on (SSO), SCIM user provisioning, enforced two-factor authentication, and audit logs among Guard Standard capabilities. Verify plan eligibility and the policies your organization needs, then test the actual behavior with your Cloud configuration.

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Groups, administrators, and product access

Review the destination group membership and application access after migration, especially for privileged roles and groups with broad access. Confirm that the right people can administer the Cloud organization and products, while users who should not have access remain excluded. Treat duplicates and conflicting names as decisions to resolve, not as harmless migration noise.

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Audit visibility and app coverage

Check that administrators and security staff can see the audit events they need and know which activity is covered by Atlassian versus individual apps or integrations. Test visibility during the trial with the relevant roles. Do not assume that moving app data also moves its audit history or reproduces its monitoring behavior.

Content and configuration differences

Include affected Jira configuration in validation: Atlassian says Jira Cloud blocks HTML or JavaScript in custom field descriptions because of cross-site scripting (XSS) and other security concerns. Identify any source descriptions that rely on that content and determine how the Cloud configuration should be represented instead. See the Jira pre-migration checklist.

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How should you stage the migration and cut over?

Use the product assistant’s assessments and migration plans to select and stage data. A staged plan can make access checks and issue resolution easier to manage, but the sequence should fit your data dependencies and tested launch plan.

Before production cutover, review the test findings, confirm each control owner has completed their checks, and record accepted exceptions with an approver. After the migration, perform the same critical access and security checks against the live Cloud site before treating the move as complete.

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What do migration encryption, retention, and data residency mean?

Atlassian says migration traffic uses HTTPS. Its migration trust and security FAQs also describe encryption during migration, limited debugging access, and purging debugging data after 14 days. Separately, the Jira Cloud Migration Assistant page says migration data is stored for 14 days from the date a migration is created. The FAQ describes temporary in-transit storage periods that vary by product and data, so these statements should not be combined into a universal retention period for all migration data. See What is Jira Cloud Migration Assistant?.

Data residency controls are available only for selected Cloud apps and plans. Atlassian also states that user-created audit-log activity is not covered by residency. Check the current residency scope for each product and data type against your organization’s geographic requirements; a Data Center location boundary should not be assumed to carry over automatically. See Move Atlassian app data to another location.

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