Explanation: Shadow IT refers to the product creation and usage administered outside of an organization’s IT department, which can lead to unexpected costs, security and compliance concerns, and operational complexity1. Atlassian Access is a service that provides enhanced security and governance features for Atlassian Cloud products, such as SAML SSO, user provisioning, enforced two-step verification, and audit logs2. Atlassian Access also offers a feature called automatic product discovery, which helps admins discover and manage the shadow IT products created by their managed users1.
A managed user is a user whose account is on a domain that is verified by an organization3. A verified domain is a domain that an organization has proven ownership of by adding a DNS or HTTPS record4. For example, if an organization verifies the domain acme.com, then any user with an email address ending with @acme.com is a managed user of that organization.
A product is an instance of an Atlassian Cloud product, such as Jira Software, Confluence, Bitbucket, or Trello5. A product belongs to a site, which is a collection of products that share a URL and administration settings6. A site belongs to an organization, which is a way to group and manage multiple sites and products under one central admin console7.
A managed user can create a product in another Cloud organization by using their work email address to sign up for a new site or join an existing site that is not owned by their organization1. This creates a shadow IT product that is not visible or controlled by their organization’s admins. Atlassian Access can discover these shadow IT products by scanning the domains of all Atlassian Cloud products and matching them with the domains of the organizations that have Atlassian Access enabled1. Atlassian will proactively send an email to the organization admins with the number of shadow IT products created by their managed users and what the exact shadow IT product is. Within admin.atlassian.com, organization admins can also view additional information, such as the owner of these products, how many users are in that product, and the date it was created1.
Therefore, the statement that explains how Atlassian Access discovered shadow IT is that one of your managed accounts created a product in another Cloud organization.
References :
- Automatic product discovery in Atlassian Access
- Atlassian Access: Enhanced Cloud Data Security & Governance
- What is a managed account?
- Verify a domain to manage accounts
- What is a product?
- Understand Atlassian sites and organizations
- What is an Atlassian organization?
