"Atlassian has backups covered" is something most Jira and Confluence admins have heard, and it's worth understanding exactly what that means. Atlassian does run backups, and they do a solid job keeping its own infrastructure resilient, but these backups weren't designed to undo what happens after a ransomware attack or a compromised admin account. That distinction is easy to overlook until you actually need to recover from one of these incidents, which is exactly when it's worth already knowing what's covered and what isn't.
Once an attacker has legitimate account access and uses it to delete, corrupt, or alter your data, the question that matters isn't just whether backups exist; it's whether the affected data can be returned to a known-good state without rolling back everything else along with it. That's the recovery problem this article is about.
Ransomware is malicious software that locks or encrypts your data, then demands payment to release it. In a SaaS context like Jira or Confluence, an attacker doesn't need to touch your servers; they need a valid login. Once inside, they can bulk-edit fields, delete projects or spaces, exfiltrate data, or lock admins out entirely.
The financial impact is well documented. McKinsey estimates the global cost of ransomware could reach $265 billion annually by 2031, driven by a sharp rise in attack frequency and ransom demands over the past several years (McKinsey). Separately, industry cost analyses put the average total cost of a single ransomware incident,including downtime, recovery, and reputational damage,between $1.8 million and $5 million.
An account takeover happens when someone gains unauthorized control of a legitimate user or admin account, usually through stolen, phished, or leaked credentials, rather than by "hacking" a system directly. Once an attacker has valid credentials for a Jira or Confluence admin, the platform doesn't see an intruder. It sees an authenticated user with normal permissions, which is what makes ATO so hard to catch in real time for any platform, not just Atlassian's.
Verizon's 2025 Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) found that stolen credentials were the most common initial access vector, used in 22% of breaches, and that credential abuse was involved in 30% of breaches caused by human error or manipulation. The 2026 edition goes further: it found that 50% of ransomware victims had experienced a credential leak or infostealer event within 95 days before the ransomware attack. In other words, account takeover is frequently the door ransomware walks through, not a separate problem.
(For a closer look at exactly how attackers obtain that initial access in 2026 environments, with techniques across phishing, infostealer malware, credential-stuffing, and session compromise, see They're Not Breaking In, They're Logging In.)
Attackers rarely "hack" Jira or Confluence in the traditional sense. They obtain valid credentials and log in like a normal user or admin. Once inside, that legitimate access is what causes the damage that matters for recovery: deleting projects, corrupting configurations, exfiltrating sensitive tickets and pages, or locking out real admins by changing permissions and MFA settings.
From Atlassian's perspective, none of this looks like an attack. It looks like an admin doing admin things, which is a genuinely hard thing for any platform to detect in the moment. That's precisely why this scenario falls outside what native backup was ever designed to solve, and why recovering from it is a distinct problem from simply having backups at all.
It's worth understanding exactly what Atlassian's native recovery is designed to do in the scenario above. Once an attacker with valid credentials has altered or deleted data, here's what's available to help bring it back, straight from Atlassian's own documentation.
This part matters, and it's stated by Atlassian itself, not implied by a vendor. Atlassian's own trust and security documentation says:
"These backups are not used to revert customer-initiated destructive changes, such as fields overwritten using scripts, or deleted issues, projects, or sites. To avoid data loss, we recommend that you take regular backups." (Atlassian Trust Center)
A few concrete details, based on Atlassian's own support documentation:
None of this is a criticism of Atlassian, whose native backup is a strong foundation for infrastructure resilience. It just wasn't built to give individual customers a way to surgically undo an incident,that's a reasonable, deliberate design choice, and it means native backup is solving a different problem than incident recovery.
For a deeper, more general look at how native backup and purpose-built recovery tools complement each other, beyond just the ransomware/ATO scenario, see Why Jira Cloud Backups Fail When You Need Them Most and The Resilience Gap: Why Atlassian's Native Backup Fails the Enterprise Risk Test.
Picture this sequence, which mirrors what security researchers actually see:
Gartner's ransomware resilience research for 2026 found a related pattern at the infrastructure level: 78% of organizations have implemented or are implementing isolated recovery environments, but 53% of those still lack immutable backups or "golden images": the very things needed for a clean recovery. The core lesson, whether it's on-prem infrastructure or a SaaS tool like Jira, is the same: a backup that isn't isolated from the attacker's reach, and isn't restorable to a precise point in time, isn't a safety net during an active incident.
Based on how Atlassian, Gartner, and Verizon describe the problem, a recovery approach built for ransomware and ATO scenarios (rather than infrastructure disasters) generally needs:
The point-in-time and granular-restore requirements above are covered in more depth in Jira Data Disaster? Why "Full Restore" Won't Cut It (and What Will); the isolation requirement is covered in more depth in Why Immutable Backups Matter for Atlassian Cloud Data.
Here's how that plays out against the ransomware and account-takeover scenario walked through above:
None of this replaces good security hygiene: MFA, credential monitoring, least-privilege access. It's what stands between your team and a blank slate if those defenses are ever bypassed. Revyz is built to work alongside Atlassian's own protections, not instead of them.
Regardless of which vendor you consider, if ransomware or an account takeover is the scenario you're most worried about, it's worth getting straight answers to:
1. Is backup storage logically or physically isolated from our Atlassian admin credentials?
2. Can we restore a single project or space without restoring the entire instance?
3. How far back can we restore, and is that retention window longer than Atlassian's native limits?
4. Does the backup cover configuration data and the third-party apps we actually use?
5. Do we retain audit logs long enough to investigate an incident properly?
Can Jira be recovered after a ransomware attack?
Yes, if you have backup storage that's isolated from your Atlassian instance and admin credentials. Atlassian's native backups are built to protect its own infrastructure, not to reverse customer-initiated destructive changes, which is exactly what a ransomware attack executed through a compromised, authenticated account looks like from Atlassian's side. Recovery in that scenario depends on point-in-time, granular restore capability that sits outside the reach of the compromised account.
Can I recover Jira or Confluence after an admin account takeover?
Native recovery is designed around a different scenario, so the platform generally can't distinguish a legitimate admin action from the same action performed by an attacker using valid, stolen credentials. Recovery in this case depends on whether you have a separate, isolated backup that the compromised account can't reach.
Does Atlassian back up my Jira and Confluence data?
Yes, but for infrastructure resilience, things like data center failures, rather than for reversing changes a logged-in user (including an attacker using stolen credentials) made. Atlassian's own documentation states these backups aren't used to revert customer-initiated destructive changes.
How long does Atlassian keep backup data?
Native Atlassian Backup and Restore (available on Premium and Enterprise plans) retains backups for 30 days, after which they expire and can no longer be restored. Native audit logs are retained for up to 180 days depending on plan.
What's the difference between Atlassian's native backup and third-party tools like Revyz?
Atlassian's native backup is built for full-instance, infrastructure-level recovery, with a 30-day retention window and no reversal of user-initiated changes (by design, since that's a different job than incident recovery). Third-party tools like Revyz are built specifically for granular, point-in-time recovery from incidents like accidental deletion, account takeover, or ransomware, with backup storage kept isolated from the Atlassian instance itself.
Is ransomware really connected to account takeovers?
Yes. Verizon's 2026 DBIR found that 50% of ransomware victims had experienced a credential leak or infostealer event within 95 days before the ransomware attack, indicating that stolen credentials are frequently the entry point that leads to a ransomware incident.
Do I need a third-party backup tool if I already pay for Atlassian's Backup and Restore add-on?
That depends on your risk tolerance and compliance needs. If your retention, granular-restore, or third-party-app coverage requirements exceed what Atlassian's native add-on provides, a purpose-built third-party tool addresses that specific gap. It's worth mapping your requirements against the checklist above before deciding.