Jira is essential for project management, but what happens when your data disappears? A simple mistake, cyberattack, or system failure could cost you critical information and productivity. In this blog post, you will learn how to protect your Jira data by performing a solid backup and disaster recovery strategy! Learn best practices to ensure security, compliance, and uninterrupted operations for project management in Jira Cloud.
Many IT companies rely on essential tools that have become deeply embedded in their daily operations. For many, project management is nearly impossible to imagine without Jira tools.
But what if something goes wrong and your project data suddenly disappears? Would it paralyze your team's work?
Backup and Disaster Recovery are those measures that can help organizations eliminate data loss and ensure business continuity in any disaster scenario - human error, ransomware attack, service outages, etc. And the precedents have already happened… let’s remember a Jira outage, caused by a human error, in April 2022, when about 775 Jira customers couldn’t access their data for almost a fortnight.
According to 2024 DevOps Threats Unwrapped, the number of incidents in Jira grew by 44% in 2024 compared to 2023, and in total, there were 132 incidents in 2024.
However, they are not the only reasons. Backup and Disaster Recovery are important to:
“We do not warrant that your use of the cloud products will be uninterrupted or error-free, that we will review your data for accuracy or that we will preserve or maintain your data without loss. You understand that use of the cloud products necessarily involves transmissions of your data over networks that we do not own, operate or control, and we not responsible for any of your data lost, altered, intercepted or stored across such networks.”
- Atlassian Cloud Terms of Service.
Being a powerful project management tool, Jira Cloud helps teams collaborate efficiently thanks to features like agile planning, issue tracking, and workflow management. However, ensuring the security and availability of Jira data is crucial to maintaining all operations smoothly, stepping in a reliable backup strategy which is essential to prevent data loss and meet compliance requirements.
So, let’s look at the components that the effective backup & DR strategy should include…
Your backup should have full data coverage
To make sure that all your project management data is resilient, your backup solution should allow you to back up both Jira Software and Jira Service Management. The backup should cover issues, projects, users, workflows, roles, boards, attachments, audit logs, and other critical data. Moreover, your backup option should permit you to back up Jira Assets, including schema, roles, icons, objects, statuses, etc.
Ensure backup automation
Automation is key for maintaining business operations uninterrupted. Scheduling backups at appropriate times helps meet recovery time objectives (RTO) and recovery point objectives (RPO). Moreover, it saves Jira Admins’ time, as they can focus on their core duties.
Though let’s not forget that there may be situations when you may need to trigger backup immediately, let’s say, there are some critical updates that need to be saved as fast as possible. In this case, your backup option should also have the flexibility to let Jira Admins trigger backups when necessary.
Make sure you have backup replication
The 3-2-1 backup rule is a golden backup standard that helps ensure data resilience. The rule implies that you have at least 3 copies of your data, 2 of which are on different storage instances with 1 offsite.
Thus, your backup provider should allow you to add as many storage instances - both cloud and local - as your organization needs. Moreover, it should support replication across different storage locations, including cloud-to-cloud and local-to-cloud options.
Long-term retention matters
Another important aspect of your backup and DR strategy is retention. Long-term retention may be dictated by security compliance or organizational needs. For example, nowadays Jira permits retention of only 3 years, but what if you need to keep some data for longer, let’s say 5 years? Or what if you will need your data for references in your projects in 7 years?
Thus, your backup provider should allow you wider possibilities of retention. For example, with GitProtect backup & DR software for Jira Cloud, you can indicate retention due to the number of copies, the time for how long copies should be kept, or store your Jira copies infinitely.
Transparent monitoring of your backups
It’s not a secret that real-time visibility into backup status is vital for Jira Admins. It can help them keep track of backup performance and have peace of mind that their data is safe. Thus, the backup provider should provide you with a centralized monitoring dashboard, and the possibility to customize email and Slack notifications.
What’s more, your backup solution should provide you with a centralized management console with data-driven dashboards, which will permit you not only to monitor backup performance for your Jira but also give you a full picture of backup compliance, SLA, etc.
Encryption for data protection
Encryption is essential for protecting project management data both in transit and at rest. That’s why, your backup option should offer SSL transfer encryption and zero-knowledge encryption. Also, it’s great if your backup provider permits you to set your customized encryption key for better security.
Your backup should be ransomware-proof
Backup is a final line of protection, thus, it should provide some security measures against ransomware. For example, your backup solution should allow you to keep your backup copies non-executable on the storage. In this case, even if ransomware hits your PM data, it won’t be executed and spread inside the storage.
Another important thing is your storage… It should be WORM-compliant. It means that each file is written once and is read multiple times, which helps prevent backed-up data from being erased or modified.
Restore and Disaster Recovery - key to resilience
The primary goal of backups is to ensure resilience and enable quick recovery, eliminating data loss. Your backup solution should offer ready-to-use features to handle any disaster scenario, including service outages, infrastructure downtime, ransomware attacks, etc. Here are the restore and DR capabilities that can help you with it:
If you want to learn how to create a successful data recovery strategy in place, take a look at this video where three data management professionals, show three different ways to enhance the management of your data in the best possible way:
Protecting your Jira data is crucial for security, compliance, and disaster recovery. To ensure reliable backups, you can go different ways - you can write backup scripts, or use Jira’s built-in backup manager. Both options require Jira Admins to manually perform backups and check if the copy works well. A more efficient option is an automated third-party solution like GitProtect backup and Disaster Recovery Software for Jira Cloud, which enables scheduled backups at custom intervals.