Atlassian Cloud’s edge handles the application request path into Atlassian-hosted products; Cloudflare’s documented role in Atlassian’s environment is narrower, while Cloudflare One is a separate enterprise network and security offering. Moving from Data Center to Cloud therefore changes where and how Atlassian operates the product—not whether a company still needs its own network security services.
What Atlassian’s cloud edge does
Atlassian says its cloud apps and data are hosted on AWS. When a user makes a request, it reaches the Atlassian edge closest to that user. The edge checks the session and identity, consults tenant metadata to locate the product data, and forwards the request to the appropriate region and compute node. Product and platform services assemble the response.
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
- Receive and validate: The request reaches an Atlassian edge point, where session and identity checks are performed through Atlassian’s identity system.
- Locate the tenant: Tenant metadata determines the region where that tenant’s product data is held.
- Route and serve: The request goes to the target region and compute node, which builds the response from product and platform services.
This is Atlassian’s application-delivery architecture. It should not be confused with the customer-facing network edge described by Cloudflare, which terminates Internet and privately tunneled traffic to Cloudflare’s network for inspection and routing.
What security controls are part of Atlassian Cloud
Atlassian describes a layered model rather than relying on one perimeter device. Its controls span network boundaries, service communications, application behavior, and data protection.
#1 Best Overall
- Network separation: Separate zones for staff, customer data, CI/CD, and DMZ traffic; separation between production and non-production; VPC routing, firewall rules, and software-defined networking; and encryption for connections into sensitive networks.
- Service and application controls: Explicit authentication and authorization for service-to-service connections, least-privilege access, tenant-aware authorization, rate limiting, and application-layer controls.
- Data protection: Atlassian says data drives holding customer data and attachments in its named products use AES-256 encryption at rest. Its SOC 2 system description also says product connections use TLS 1.2 or higher and data stores use AES-256 at rest. The report period and applicability to a particular current deployment are not established here, so those report statements should not be treated as a guarantee about every deployment or configuration.
Atlassian also describes its architecture as using decoupled services and tenant-aware controls. These are platform protections; they do not remove the customer’s need to decide which identity, access, compliance, data-residency, or network controls are required for its own users and systems.
What Cloudflare does in the documented Atlassian connection
Atlassian’s SOC 2 report describes Cloudflare as an additional public ingress point, alongside AWS, for ingesting and distributing real-time messages for Confluence Whiteboards and Confluence Databases. It says traffic between Cloudflare and Atlassian uses the Global Edge firewall configuration that protects Atlassian’s corporate network.
That is evidence of a specific service path, not evidence that Cloudflare is Atlassian’s universal edge provider or that Atlassian replaced Cloudflare. Nor does it establish that a customer moving from Data Center will automatically receive, lose, or need a Cloudflare service. The report’s period is not clear from the available description, so its control statements should be read in that scope.
Recommended Free Tools
How the security layers differ
The practical comparison is about scope, not which vendor is the winner. An organization can use Atlassian Cloud and a separate SASE or network security service at the same time.
| Layer | Documented job | What it does not establish |
|---|---|---|
| Atlassian application edge | Validate session and identity, locate tenant data, and route product requests into Atlassian-hosted services. | That it provides an enterprise-wide network perimeter for a customer’s other applications, devices, or infrastructure. |
| Atlassian platform controls | Separate environments and network zones; authorize services; enforce tenant-aware application controls and encryption. | That every customer-specific identity, compliance, app, or hybrid-network requirement is met without configuration or assessment. |
| Cloudflare One / enterprise network layer | Cloudflare describes a SASE platform covering zero-trust network access, secure web gateway, network connectivity, and policy services for applications, users, devices, and networks across SaaS, public cloud, on-premises data centers, and colocation sites. | That it is a substitute for Atlassian’s internal product security controls, or that its architecture descriptions independently validate performance or security efficacy. |
Cloudflare’s anycast network and inspection close to traffic sources are part of Cloudflare’s own architecture description. Whether those capabilities remain useful after an Atlassian migration depends on the organization’s broader access and network design, not on the fact that Atlassian operates an application edge.
When to assess Atlassian Isolated Cloud
Organizations with higher isolation requirements can evaluate Atlassian Isolated Cloud rather than assuming standard multi-tenant cloud provides the same resource model. Atlassian describes dedicated customer compute, storage, networking, VPC, domain and edge, and firewall. It also describes customer-managed keys for long-term persistent user-generated content.
The control plane remains shared. That distinction matters: Isolated Cloud provides a dedicated data plane as described by Atlassian, but should not be represented as complete separation of every part of the service. Confirm the available controls, service scope, and contractual fit against the organization’s specific requirements.
What changes when migrating from Data Center
In Data Center, the organization operates Atlassian infrastructure in its own environment or hosting arrangement. In Atlassian Cloud, the service provider operates the hosted application platform, while the customer still has decisions to make about users, configuration, connected apps, data handling, and organizational policy. Atlassian recommends that teams understand this shared-responsibility boundary and identify which requirements are met by Atlassian and which depend on product capabilities or customer configuration.
Atlassian’s current end-of-life guidance sets March 28, 2029 as the Data Center product end-of-life date, with phased changes beginning March 30, 2026. Atlassian says existing subscriptions may be renewed until the stated cutoff; its guidance says affected end-of-life products become read-only and warns that an internet-connected product without new security fixes carries risk. The stated change excludes Bitbucket Data Center. Because product scope and exceptions can change, check Atlassian’s live end-of-life guidance before setting a migration schedule.
Atlassian’s 2026 pages also publish migration-status figures: it says 99% of its customers are “in or on a path to cloud,” and that 75% of regulated and enterprise customers are “in cloud or on a path to cloud.” These are Atlassian’s company-published, qualified status claims; they are not independent measures of completed migrations or comparative security outcomes.
A migration assessment that covers the real security questions
Atlassian’s migration guidance calls for security, privacy, and legal teams to be involved in planning. Build the assessment around the controls and operational dependencies that will change, not just the data-transfer task.
What’s actually slowing this PC down?
Pick the symptom - the matching free tool is one click away.
Quick Recap
- Map responsibilities: Document which controls Atlassian provides, which require customer configuration, and how the arrangement satisfies organizational requirements.
- Review identity and access: Check identity lifecycle, authentication, access governance, and whether additional capabilities such as Atlassian Guard or Cloud Enterprise are needed.
- Confirm compliance and residency: Map each obligation to an available cloud capability, applicable contract, region, and attestation rather than assuming that a cloud move preserves the prior arrangement.
- Assess every Marketplace app: Review each app’s security, privacy, data handling, migration support, and feature parity. An app’s presence in the current deployment does not by itself establish that it will work or migrate the same way in Cloud.
- Design continuity and recovery: Test integrations, migration timing and downtime, backups, recovery, user management and change, and post-migration links and tasks.
- Decide on network coverage: Separate controls for access to Atlassian’s hosted service from controls needed for users, devices, applications, and infrastructure elsewhere in the organization. Evaluate Cloudflare or another network service against that wider requirement.
- Test before cutover: Use Atlassian’s planning, pre-migration, and post-migration guidance to validate data, apps, access, and operating procedures. Atlassian recommends specialized solution partners for complex migrations.
Product prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on Amazon at the time of purchase will apply.
