Migrating to Atlassian Cloud? A Few Things to Know about Data Residency and Compliance

When we talk to current or potential customers about migrating to Atlassian Cloud, we get a lot of questions about whether Cloud will meet their compliance and data residency requirements. Since every company is so different, and you may have industry-specific compliance regulations to meet or customer agreements around where data is housed, there aren’t any straightforward answers. The reality is, nobody understands your business like you do, so you will likely have to undertake some independent research to determine if Cloud is the right fit or if Data Center is necessary.

The good news, however, is that Atlassian simplifies this research by making all the necessary information available in its Trust Center. The Atlassian Trust Center is a centralized place where customers can go for information about security, compliance, reliability, and privacy. You can also access the company’s roadmap there, so you can see what’s in the works.

Atlassian Cloud Compliance

Atlassian designed its Cloud deployment option with regulatory frameworks in mind, and it is already compliant with many of the most common industry standards, including ISO 2700, SOC 2, SOC 3, FedRAMP, PCI DSS, and VPAT. Compliance may only apply to certain products, or may be contingent on how the instance is implemented.

Data Residency 

Your data typically resides in the region closest to where most of your users are, although Atlassian does provide the ability for you to specify data residency within certain regions. These currently include the U.S., Europe, Australia, and Germany. While as of this writing, Atlassian does not yet offer data residency for apps, it is on the roadmap for Jira Software, Confluence, and Jira Service Management.

A Few Tips from Isos Technology

The Cloud landscape is changing rapidly, as Atlassian is continually advancing their own version of the product, and pursuing more compliance certifications, it’s reasonable to expect even greater flexibility around data residency in the coming months and years. It's a great fit for almost all customers. That said, we recommend, and can facilitate, bringing your security and compliance teams into discussion early. They will need to ensure that there are no unresolveable concerns that prevent you from migrating to Cloud, and they may need some time to do so.

If you want to learn more about whether Cloud or Data Center is right for you, read It’s Time to Migrate! Is Atlassian Cloud or Data Center Right for You?