Demystifying BYOK and BYOS in Atlassian: A Simple Guide to Owning Your Data

Let’s talk about moving to the cloud. When we shift our heavy workloads to platforms like Atlassian Cloud, whether that’s Jira, Confluence, or Jira Service Management, it feels like a huge weight is lifted off our shoulders. You don’t have to worry about server racks, cooling, or hardware failures anymore.

Because of this, it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking, "Atlassian has my back for everything now". But that is actually a dangerous misconception.

There is a concept called the Shared Responsibility Model. Think of it like renting an apartment. The landlord (Atlassian) is responsible for the building's security, the plumbing, and making sure the roof doesn't cave in. But the stuff inside your apartment, your TV, your jewelry, your family photos? That is entirely on you.

Atlassian makes sure the infrastructure is up and running, but the actual data you create, your intellectual property, customer details, and project roadmaps, is your responsibility. If an integration goes rogue and scrambles your configurations, or someone accidentally deletes a massive project, Atlassian’s large infrastructure backups will not easily help you restore that specific mistake.

To truly protect your data, you need to understand two key concepts: BYOS and BYOK and apply them in context of primary copy of the data (Atlassian apps) and secondary copy of the data (backup data) They might sound like corporate jargon, but they are incredibly straightforward once you break them down. Let's dive in.

What is BYOS? (Bring Your Own Storage)

Imagine you are paying a storage facility to hold your furniture. BYOS is basically saying, "I like your moving service, but I want you to put my furniture in my own personal garage, not your warehouse".

In the Atlassian ecosystem, native backups have some strict limitations:

• Atlassian hosts your backup data and you cannot put that data in your own garage!
• Atlassian only keeps your backups for 30 days; on day 31, they are gone forever.
• Native backups have size limits, which you might hit if you have a massive instance.
• Jira caps out at 300 GB of compressed data or 7 million attachments for native backup support.
• Confluence is even smaller, capped at just 32 GB.
• Native restoration is generally an all-or-nothing rollback; you cannot fix a single deleted ticket without overwriting everything to a new site.

Bring Your Own Storage changes the game. Instead of Atlassian holding your backups in their locked ecosystem, BYOS pipelines your data directly into your own cloud storage. This means sending data to your own Amazon AWS S3 bucket or your Microsoft Azure Blob account.

Why You Need BYOS

• The 3-2-1 Rule: In the IT world, you want three copies of your data, on two different media, with one offsite. Native backups fail this offsite rule because they live in the same Atlassian house as your active data. BYOS successfully moves it to your own separate AWS or Azure environment. If Atlassian goes completely offline, you still have your raw data, and it can be stored in an end-user readable HTML format (with Revyz).
• Longer Retention: With BYOS, you bypass Atlassian's 30-day limit entirely. You can push backups into cheap, long-term storage like AWS S3 Glacier and keep them for years for mere pennies, satisfying strict legal retention requirements. (With the HTML format that Revyz supports, end users can read the data for many years to come)
• Data Residency & Compliance: Privacy laws sometimes dictate that your data cannot leave your specific country. Atlassian might not have a local data center for you, but BYOS allows you to write backups directly to an AWS or Azure storage instance sitting right in your hometown, solving compliance issues instantly.
• Granular Recovery: Third-party BYOS tools allow you to dig into your backup bucket and restore a single Jira ticket or one deleted attachment without nuking your whole instance.

A Note on BYOS Security: People often worry about the security of moving their backups, but modern cloud storage systems (like AWS S3 or Azure Blob) encrypt your data by default. Because you own the environment, you can instantly revoke the backup vendor's access to your data if needed. This gives BYOS a "kill switch" characteristic for your backups.

What is BYOK? (Bring Your Own Key)

If BYOS is about where the safe is kept, BYOK is about who holds the key to that safe.

By default, in context of the primary copy of the data Atlassian automatically encrypts your data to make your life easier. It is very secure, but because Atlassian holds the encryption keys, they could theoretically decrypt your data.

Bring Your Own Key means you use your own cryptographic key, usually managed in your own AWS Key Management Service (KMS) or an Azure equivalent, to lock up your data. Atlassian still hosts the encrypted data, but every time they need to read a Jira issue or display a Confluence page, their system must knock on your AWS account's door and ask permission to use your key.

Why You Need BYOK

• The Ultimate "Kill Switch": Imagine your company is hit by a massive cyberattack or ransomware. With BYOK, you have a panic button. You simply revoke Atlassian's access to your key in AWS, and instantly, all your Atlassian sites go dark and become completely unreadable ciphertext. The data becomes useless to hackers.
• Strict Compliance: If you are a hospital dealing with HIPAA or a bank navigating financial regulations, auditors want mathematical proof that nobody but you (including the vendor) can read your primary data.
• Deep Auditing: Because Atlassian must ask your AWS account for permission every time it decrypts a file, your security team receives a perfect log of every single action, creating a goldmine for spotting weird behavior.

Warning: There is a major risk with BYOK. If you accidentally delete your encryption key, your data is gone forever. It is completely unrecoverable, meaning you are taking on the ultimate responsibility.

BYOS vs. BYOK: Which Should You Pick?

The honest answer depends on what keeps you up at night.

Choose BYOS if:

• Data sovereignty is your top priority, and you want full access to do what you want with your backups.
• You worry about accidental deletions and need granular restoration for individual tickets or configurations.
• You must adhere to strict legal retention policies (e.g., 7 years) or geographic privacy laws.

Choose BYOK if:

• You handle highly sensitive trade secrets or classified government data and cannot trust a third-party vendor in this case Atlassian.
• You operate in heavily regulated industries requiring proof of exclusive cryptographic control.
• You want the peace of mind of an instant "kill switch" to cut off vendor access during an active network breach.
• BYOK should be used in the context of the primary copy of the data.
• Do not make the mistake of looking for BYOK support in your backups (secondary data) whereas primary data is left open to the SaaS vendor

Can You Use Both?

Absolutely. Combining them creates what security experts call "Zero Trust Data Protection". You use Atlassian's BYOK to lock down your live primary environment. Then, you pipeline your backup data into your own storage bucket (BYOS), where it is encrypted by default. You own the lock, and you own the vault.

How Revyz Can Help You Take Control

If managing these backups, storage buckets, and recovery pipelines sounds overwhelming, that’s exactly where Revyz steps in. Built specifically for Atlassian Cloud (Jira, Confluence, and Jira Service Management), Revyz is designed to bridge the gap in the Shared Responsibility Model and make BYOS effortless.

Here is how Revyz puts you in the driver's seat:

• Automated BYOS: Revyz seamlessly connects your Atlassian site directly to your own AWS S3 or Azure storage environment. You don't have to build complex data pipelines; Revyz automates your daily backups while you retain 100% ownership of the storage bucket.
• Granular, Stress-Free Recovery: Remember the headache of Atlassian's all-or-nothing rollback? Revyz allows you to dig into your BYOS bucket and restore individual Jira tickets, specific attachments, or even complex site configurations with just a few clicks.
• Readable Formats for Emergencies: If Atlassian experiences an outage, Revyz ensures your backups are stored in an end-user readable HTML format, so you can actually look at your data and keep working even when the primary system is down.
• Complete Zero Trust Enablement: By pairing Revyz’s automated BYOS capabilities with Atlassian's native BYOK, you can achieve that ultimate Zero Trust security posture without needing a team of cryptographic engineers to maintain it.

Moving to the cloud does not mean giving up ownership. Whether you choose to control where your data sleeps (BYOS), who gets to unlock it (BYOK), or use a platform like Revyz to manage it all, the important thing is that you are taking the wheel. Don't wait for a disaster to figure out what the Shared Responsibility Model actually means for your team.