Redact sensitive data from Jira
Attachment scanning functionality is part of an early access program. You may see a difference between the information below and your Guard administration experience.
Guard Detect sends an alert when potentially sensitive data is detected. The alert includes an excerpt of the sensitive data to help you investigate. If you determine that the data is sensitive and should not be stored in Jira, you can choose to redact the data directly from the alert.
When you redact, the sensitive data is deleted and replaced by a solid bar. What happens when data is redacted or deleted?
The only way to restore redacted content is to use the Guard Detect API, and this must be actioned within 30 days of the redaction. https://developer.atlassian.com/cloud/guard-detect/developer/api-examples/#restore-redacted-content
Who can do this? |
Redact content or delete an attachment from an alert
Redact content from an alert
The data that will be redacted is highlighted red in the excerpt. If there’s more than one instance of the sensitive data in the Jira work item, you’ll be able to choose which instances to redact.
To redact sensitive data from an alert:
In Guard Detect, select Alerts from the header.
Navigate to a content scanning alert.
Review the highlighted sensitive data and investigation steps to determine if the data should be redacted.
Select Redact.
Choose which instances to redact.
The sensitive data will be deleted and replaced by a solid bar in the fields where it appeared and in the issue history. This can take a few minutes. We’ll let you know when it’s complete.
When sensitive data is detected in attachments, you’ll see a Delete attachment option.
Each instance of the sensitive data is highlighted. This is the text that will be redacted. A few words of context help the analyst determine if the data is sensitive.
When you select Redact you’ll have the option to select which instances of the data to redact.
Delete an attachment from an alert
Guard can’t redact sensitive data in an attachment because attachments are files, not editable page content. When Guard finds an attachment containing sensitive data, you have the option to delete the attachment. This option deletes the attachment and replaces it with a placeholder file on the work item that contained the sensitive attachment.
To redact sensitive data from an alert:
In Guard Detect, select Alerts from the header.
Navigate to a content scanning alert with an attachment.
Review the highlighted sensitive data and investigation steps to determine if the data should be redacted.
Select Delete attachment.
Read through the warning message and confirm when you’re ready.
To restore a deleted attachment, use the Guard Detect API within 30 days of its deletion. After that time, it’s permanently deleted.
Considerations
There are a number of things to consider when deciding if redaction is the right remediation option for your organization. It’s just one of several ways you could choose to handle sensitive data.
For security reasons, redacted sensitive data and deleted sensitive attachments require extra effort to restore — and is only possible through queries to the Guard Detect API.
The text highlighted in the alert snippet is the exact text that will be deleted from the Jira work item.
The user who added the sensitive data to the Jira work item will be notified that sensitive data has been redacted. The notification includes the name of the person who performed the redaction.
Permissions required to redact content
In order to redact sensitive data, the Guard Detect admin must have access to the Jira app instance.
Additionally, if project permissions or issue-level security prevents the Guard Detect admin from seeing the Jira work item, they won’t be able to see the sensitive data excerpt or redact the data.
As a workaround, you may want to create an account that can access everything in your Jira apps.
Sensitive attachments can be deleted by a Guard Detect admin regardless of their Jira app access or space permissions.
Troubleshooting
If the redaction request fails for some reason you can remove the sensitive data manually. Some of the reasons redaction may fail include:
Too many instances of sensitive data in the item.
The sensitive data was manually removed after the alert was sent.
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