Business Challenge
Enterprises using Atlassian Data Center applications often struggle to enforce secure and user-friendly authentication.
Common challenges include:
- Balancing Security & Usability: Enforcing 2FA for local logins without triggering additional 2FA prompts for SSO users authenticated via an Identity Provider (IDP).
- Redundant 2FA Prompts: Users accessing multiple Crowd-connected Atlassian apps often have to repeat the 2FA process for each app within the same session.
- OTP Management Complexity: Managing and entering multiple one-time passwords (OTPs) across different applications can lead to user frustration and reduced productivity.
Solution Overview
To address these challenges, we implemented a unified 2FA solution across Atlassian Data Center applications, enabling secure access while simplifying the user experience. The solution supports:
- One-time 2FA validation across Crowd-connected apps
- Seamless 2FA skipping for SSO-authenticated users
- A shared OTP secret across Jira, Confluence, and Bitbucket
This eliminates redundant authentication prompts, enhances security posture, and simplifies 2FA setup and usage.
How It Works
1. Skip 2FA for SSO Users:
The "Skip 2FA on SSO" feature ensures that:
- Users authenticated via SSO (through an IdP) bypass additional 2FA prompts.
- Local logins still require 2FA enforcement, maintaining security for non-SSO users.
This reduces extra authentication steps while keeping security policies consistent.
2. Unified OTP for All Atlassian Applications
The "Share Secret Key" feature enables:
- A single OTP key across all Atlassian applications, removing the need to manage multiple OTP entries in authenticator apps.
- Users can reuse their existing Mobile Authenticator Key when setting up 2FA in Jira, Confluence, and Bitbucket, eliminating the need to manage multiple OTP entries.
This ensures a simplified authentication process while maintaining strong 2FA enforcement.
3. One-Time 2FA Validation Across Crowd-Connected Applications
The "One-time 2FA Validation" feature enhances authentication efficiency by:
- Allowing users to complete 2FA authentication once in any Crowd-connected Atlassian application.
- Automatically skipping 2FA prompts for other connected applications within the same session.
This prevents repeated 2FA challenges, improving >both security and productivity across tools.
Key Benefits
Enhanced Productivity:
Eliminates unnecessary 2FA prompts across Crowd-connected applications, ensuring smoother workflows and faster access.
Seamless Authentication:
Reduces redundant authentication steps for SSO users while maintaining strong 2FA enforcement for local logins.
User & Group-Based 2FA Control:
Enable or disable 2FA based on specific users or groups, providing flexibility in enforcement policies.
Brute Force Protection:
Detects and blocks repeated failed login attempts, preventing unauthorized access and credential-stuffing attacks.
Detailed Audit Logs:
Track authentication attempts and access history for compliance and security monitoring.
