Confluence Security Best Practices

Confluence is used to store some of the most important knowledge across many organizations, such as technical docs, internal procedures, compliance materials, customer information, and even recovery instructions.

This article explains the most important Confluence security best practices, how they differ from Jira security, and why backup and recovery should be part of a complete Confluence data protection strategy.

Why Confluence security matters

Atlassian supports 300,000+ customers, including over 80% of Fortune 500 companies. That scale shows how deeply Atlassian tools can become part of everyday business operations.

In Confluence, organizations often store more than basic documentation. Teams manage technical knowledge, internal processes, incident response notes, compliance evidence, customer-related information, recovery instructions, and business-critical decisions – all in one place.

If this data ever gets exposed, deleted, corrupted, or unavailable, the impact can quickly spread across teams from engineering and security, to legal, compliance, and operations teams.

Confluence security vs Jira security: what is different?

Jira is mainly used for structured work tracking: issues, projects, workflows, tasks, tickets, and development processes. Its security usually focuses on who can access specific projects, manage work items, change workflows, or perform administrative actions.

Confluence is different because it is built around knowledge management. Data is spread across spaces, pages, comments, attachments, templates, exports, and shared links. This makes Confluence security less about protecting a single workflow and more about controlling how organizational knowledge is created, shared, exposed, and recovered.

Keep in mind that Jira and Confluence share some security foundations, including users, groups, admins, authentication, Marketplace apps, auditability, and shared responsibility. However, the security focus is different for each one.

👉 In simple terms: Jira security protects structured work, while Confluence security revolves around business knowledge and content sprawl.

What makes Confluence security different?

Confluence security is different because information can spread across many content layers: spaces, pages, comments, attachments, templates, exports, shared links, and connected apps. This makes it harder to govern than data managed through one structured workflow.

The main challenge is that Confluence is built for sharing knowledge. That supports collaboration, but it also means sensitive information can easily end up in old spaces, copied pages, uploaded files, or places that are no longer actively reviewed.

Because of that, Confluence security should focus not only on access, but also on how knowledge is shared, monitored, and recovered.

Confluence security best practices

This section outlines useful practices to keep Confluence data protected. Since Confluence is widely used by many global organizations, to store valuable data, security becomes an important aspect.

#1 Review global permissions, space permissions, and content restrictions

A good Confluence security setup starts with understanding how access is structured. Confluence permissions work on three main levels:

• Global permissions are Confluence-wide controls managed by Confluence administrators.
• Space permissions define who can access and work with content inside a specific space.
• Content restrictions provide more granular control over selected pages or content items.

Teams should regularly review who has access to Confluence, which groups can access each space, and whether sensitive content needs additional restrictions. Group-based access is usually easier to manage than assigning permissions to individual users one by one, especially when teams change, people move between roles, or external collaborators are added.

It is also important to remember that Confluence permissions are additive. If a user gets access through several groups, all of those permission sources contribute to their effective access. To fully revoke access, teams need to remove every permission source that still grants it. Page-level restrictions can help protect sensitive content, but they should support clean space-level permissions, not replace them.

#2 Limit admins and privileged roles

Admin access should only be granted to people who actually need it. In Confluence, privileged users can affect users, access settings, permissions, spaces, apps, or configuration, depending on their role. Every unnecessary privileged account increases the risk of mistakes, misconfiguration, or abuse.

Things to review regularly include organization admins, site admins, user access admins, app admins, and space admins. These rights should never be granted for convenience, and they should be removed quickly when someone changes roles, leaves the company, or simply no longer requires this level of access.

The same rule applies at the space level. Users who can manage a space can also affect permissions inside it, so this access should be evaluated regularly, especially in spaces that store sensitive, regulated, or business-critical information.

#3 Control public links, anonymous access, and guests

Public links, anonymous access, and guests are three different external exposure paths. They should be reviewed separately, because each one gives people outside the normal Confluence user base a different way to reach content.

• Public links let teams share selected Confluence content with anyone who has the link, even if that person does not have Confluence access or an Atlassian account. They are useful for public-facing materials, but they should not be enabled by default for sensitive spaces. Teams should regularly check which spaces allow public links and remove links that are no longer needed.
• Anonymous access is broader. It can make Confluence content available to people who are not logged in, and Atlassian warns that anyone on the internet may be able to find and access public Confluence content when anonymous access is enabled. This should be avoided for spaces that contain internal, regulated, customer-related, or business-critical data.
• Guests should also be reviewed regularly. External collaboration should have a clear owner, scope, and end date. Guest access that was created for one project should not become permanent access to organizational knowledge.

#4 Protect sensitive pages, attachments, and exports

Confluence security is not only about who can access a page. It is also about what data is stored there and how easily that data can leave the workspace. Teams should identify spaces and pages that contain sensitive content, such as customer-related information, legal documents, security notes, compliance evidence, incident reports, financial details, or recovery instructions.

Attachments and exports need special attention because sensitive data can live outside the page body itself. PDFs, spreadsheets, screenshots, logs, diagrams, contracts, and exported files can all contain confidential information. If users can freely download attachments or export spaces, this data can leave the controlled environment and become harder to track.

Where available, data security policies can help enforce more rigorous controls around exports and attachment downloads. Still, the foundation is simple: classify sensitive content, avoid storing secrets or unnecessary sensitive data, and regularly review what is attached, exported, and shared.

#5 Review Marketplace apps and integrations

Marketplace apps and integrations can extend Confluence or simplify work in it, but they can also interact with Confluence content. That makes them part of the security surface that must be addressed, not just a productivity add-on.

• Teams should regularly review installed apps, remove the ones that are no longer used, and check what data each app can access.
• Before installing a new app, it is worth reviewing the vendor, security posture, permissions, data handling, and whether the app is really necessary.
• AI, search, and summarization tools should be reviewed like any other integration. The key question is whether their access follows the right permissions, connectors, and app settings.

#6 Monitor changes and review audit logs

Confluence security should not rely on settings that are configured once and forgotten. Teams should use available audit logs to review all relevant and important changes, such as: global permission changes, space permission updates, public link changes, app-related changes, and unusual space administration activity.

This is especially important in larger environments, where users, spaces, guests, and integrations can change over time. Without regular monitoring, risky changes can stay unnoticed until data is already exposed, deleted, or misconfigured.

👉 Audit logs and documented access reviews also help teams investigate incidents and provide evidence for internal security processes or compliance checks.

Shared responsibility in Confluence security

Confluence Cloud security does not mean every Confluence risk is handled by Atlassian. In the Atlassian Cloud shared responsibility model, Atlassian protects the applications, systems, and hosted environment, while customers remain responsible for how their data, users, apps, and recovery processes are managed.

👉 The key point is simple: Atlassian protects the cloud platform, but organizations still need to control access, govern content, review apps, and make sure business-critical Confluence data can be recovered.

Why backup and recovery are part of Confluence security

Even with strong access controls, mistakes, compromised accounts, and malicious activity can still lead to data loss, which is why backup and recovery are embedded in any effective Confluence security strategy.

Native Atlassian Backup and Restore

For Confluence, recovery scope matters. Teams may need to restore spaces, page trees, comments, attachments, page history, restrictions, permissions, and selected settings – not just the latest version of one page. Atlassian Backup and Restore supports many Confluence data types, including spaces, pages/blogs with history, comments, attachments with history, page restrictions, space permissions, and some site-level settings, but Atlassian also states that only listed items are backed up and restored, and public links must be generated again.

Native backup should also be checked against operational needs. Atlassian backup policies can run once, daily, or weekly, and backups are stored in Atlassian storage for 30 days. Restore is limited to backups from the last 30 days and can only be performed into apps without user-generated data; for Confluence, that means deleting all spaces, including personal spaces, and permanently removing them from trash before restore.

👉 Marketplace app data is not supported by Atlassian Backup and Restore, so teams should verify how critical app-related data is protected.

The importance of third-party backup and disaster recovery

Third-party backup becomes important when teams need longer retention, independent backup storage, more control over backup schedules, granular restore, stronger recovery testing, encryption, replication, or recovery options for incidents discovered after the native retention window.

This is where backup becomes part of security resilience. Third-party tools like GitProtect, build Confluence backup around:

• Scheduled and customizable granular backup and restore 
• Strong encryption 
• Replication 
• Access management 
• Recovery from accidental deletion, malicious insider activity, natural disasters or ransomware attacks

Recovery should be judged by whether teams can bring the desired content back in a controlled way without creating a second incident. Confluence backup should be tested against real recovery scenarios: deleted spaces, lost attachments, overwritten documentation, permission mistakes, failed migrations, compromised accounts, ransomware-related incidents, and compliance-driven retention needs.

Conclusion

Confluence security is about controlling how business-critical knowledge is stored, shared, monitored, and recovered. Teams should review permissions, limit privileged roles, control external exposure, monitor changes, and understand where Atlassian’s responsibility ends and their own begins.

With the right backup and recovery strategy for Confluence, organizations can reduce the impact of accidental deletion, misconfiguration, compromised accounts, ransomware-related incidents, and other data loss scenarios, while keeping company knowledge recoverable.