We were pleased to attend the Atlassian Summit this year, what a great turn out! Summit is a great way for Atlassian specialists, partners, and users to discuss the use of the Atlassian Tool Suite, along with reviewing up and coming functionality and capabilities of the tool suite. Here were some major announcements we saw and participated from Summit:
Renewed Focus on Server
Atlassian emphasized its focus on server, with the recent release of Jira 8, and its upcoming release of Confluence 7. New releases include added functionality, improved searching & reporting capabilities, and performance enhancements. The server includes enhancements already built into the Cloud.
Expansion of the Cloud
The Cloud is becoming the key product utilized by Fortune 500 firms. Recognizing this, Atlassian has increased the functionality capabilities of the Cloud. Atlassian announced an expansion of the Cloud capabilities to include ADFS integration, new integration capabilities, and an increased user count from 5,000 to 10,000.
Industry days – what specialists are seeing
Ascend Integrated participated in a number of the industry days, including the Education / University and Government Industry session. We found many of the attendees were interested in understanding how to migrate from their server / data center instances to the cloud, and what it would entail.
OpsGenie > A Great Way to DevOps
New integration with Jira Cloud and Server were announced with OpsGenie. One of our specialists, Shaun Jones attended and participated in an OpsGenie session, and explained several use cases for OpsGenie, including text integration capabilities. A special Thank you to all those who visited our booth. We’re looking forward to the Government Symposium, and Summit 20! Have a great Summit experience? Contact Us!
We know it is something you shouldn’t be doing, storing personally identifiable information (PII) or protected health information (PHI) in your Jira issues. But, mistakes happen, or maybe you are required by your organization to securely store / access this information. Throughout Ascend Integrated’s time as an Atlassian Solutions Provider, we’ve worked across Healthcare and Financial organizations looking to protect their highly sensitive information, including PII and in the case of Healthcare, PHI.
Here we explore several key factors to maintaining HIPAA Compliance with your instance, along with ensuring data is stored correctly.
How to keep PHI / PII secured?
HIPAA compliance is made up a group of safeguards, including Administrative, Physical, and Technical safeguards, defining processes and procedures for guarding and securing your PHI / PII. Atlassian has already come out and stated the Cloud is not meant for PHI / PII compliance. A server, or data center instance is absolutely required for maintaining this type of information (or if your Jira / Confluence system touches this data in any way).
What techniques can you use with the Atlassian Tool Suite?
Use a SSL Certificate
While its basic, installing and configuring a SSL certificate with your Jira / Confluence suite is an absolute necessity when implementing HIPAA compliance. Ensuring all data is encrypted and accessed only through a secure connection is step 0!
Control Access Tightly Using Permission Schemes and SSO
There are several options here, including restricting who can access projects / spaces using advanced permission scheme configurations, or implementing a SSO / Active Directory authentication and authorization step will ensure only those users within your organization will have access to your data. Ensure groups are properly set up and controlled across both applications.
Make use of Issue Security
Out of the box, Jira allows you to restrict the viewing of issues to specific individuals / team members or groups. Similarly in Confluence, ensure only specific users have access to any pages containing links to, or actual PII / PHI.
Explore Add-ons / Apps: PII Protector for Jira
A plug for the hard working folks at Enhancera, the PII protector will help you maintain PII securely, hiding data from users who are not required to view / manage the data. Auditability and traceability is built right into the tool as well. You can find additional information on this app here: PII Protector for Jira.
Enable Database Encryption
While not supported by Atlassian, Database encryption provides an extra layer of security. All Jira / Confluence applications sit atop a RDBMS (i.e. MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQL Server, Oracle). Enable encryption, and ensure backup / copies are maintained in a secure location.
Conduct Regular Security Audits
Regular security audits (monthly / quarterly, etc.) will help you determine where your flaws may be, and what you can do to alleviate / reduce the risk of exposure. Ensure your security team understands and documents the use of Jira and Confluence in your system.
What Next?
Interested in learning more, or have Ascend Integrated review your instance? Contact Us Today!
By now you have heard of our latest free app to reach the Atlassian Marketplace, “Color Queues for Jira Service Desk”: Color Queues for Jira Service Desk. If not, Color Queues is a free app developed by Ascend Integrated enabling users to highlight and focus on queues in their Service Desk project. Using Color Queues enables your agents / teams to organize their queues using color coding, ensuring a faster response and resolution time for your customer’s requests.
In this blog, we’re going to cover three major use cases for Color Queues and leveraging existing Jira Service Desk functionality so you can get the most out of our app. Note, you will need to be a Project Administrator to enable and configure Color Queues.
Identify Your Tasks
Do you have a specific queue you work within? Quickly and easily identify your queue from the list, especially if your team is working with A LOT of queues. Working with your Project Administrator, create a queue with issues assigned only to you (i.e. assignee = currentUser() and resolution is empty) and assign a color. Now, you (and all your fellow Service Desk Agents) will be able to focus on which queue identifies your current, open tasks / requests.
Figure 1: Creating the “My Open Requests” Queue
Figure 2: Viewing the “My Open Requests” Queue with “Color Queues” enabled
View Critical / High Priority Requests
When your customers enter high-priority requests or issues, you want to identify these right away in your large list of queues. To configure, create a new queue and set “Issues to Show” to only high priority issues where there is no set resolution (i.e. priority = “Critical” and resolution is EMPTY). Identify a color, click “Create”, and your queue will appear!
Figure 3: Creating the High Priority Requests Queue
Figure 4: Viewing the High Priority Request Queue in the Queue List
View Expiring SLAs For Powerful Reporting
Does your organization monitor SLAs closely? Use Color Queues in Coordination with your SLAs! Create a queue showing all open requests / issues that are expiring in 1 hour or less (i.e. use a JQL query like “Time to resolution” < remaining (“1h”).
After you create this queue, assign a color to it, and easily identify all requests whose SLA’s are expiring:
Figure 5: Creating a SLA Expiration Queue using Color Queues
And now your service desk team can easily identify those requests expiring in 1 hour or less!
Figure 6: Viewing the Expiring SLAs Queue
How are you using Color Queues? Let us know in the comments section or drop us a note: Contact Us!
