Internal vs External Confluence

[me]

HI

I have Internal Confluence that somtimes need to access some of our cutomer to access meeting notes and other stuff.

now question is: is there any case study or best practice that show how I can handle this situation?

e.g. which is better?

A. create another instance that seperate Internal & External Confluence? if answer is yes, How can I sync them, and prevent duplication?

B. provide restricted access for customer to Internal? any risk?

Any idea?

Thanks,

[Brant Schroeder]

@me How confidential is the information in your instance?  Is is already accessible from the web or is it only available on your internal network? How do you currently manage access?

I have worked on an instance that had internal content, shared public content and partner content.  I have also worked on other instances that were locked down and could only be accessed on the internal network or via VPN.  

You need to determine what your security risks are and what risks you are willing to accept as a company then move forward from there.

[me]

@Brant Schroeder Thanks for answer,

1-definately different type of data exist on Internal one (confidential and non-confidential).

2-only available on your internal network.

3-LDAP

what is your suggestion for this situation?

[Brant Schroeder]

@me Do you allow external clients to access your internal network?

[me]

nope

[Brant Schroeder]

@me if the Confluence instance is only accessible internally and you currently do not provide access I would recommend looking at setting up a different instance that can be accessed by external users.  This would provide additional cost and would create logistical issues.

[me]

How other company like atlassian mange this situation?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

They tend to allow people into their Confluence, with accounts permissioned for read-only access, or have a separate public Confluence as @Brant Schroeder suggests.

[me]

@Nic Brough -Adaptavist- i mentioned these things on my post, i need more about side effects and some real world examples.

any idea?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

I think you already understand the "side effects" - people either get to see things or they do not.

I'm not sure what you want from "real world examples".  You can imagine that I've worked with a lot of Confluence (and other information systems) and seen many different needs for sharing, but the solution has always been "give people the access they need, in the systems containing the data they need to work with".  

Start with security - what limitations do your security team have with visibility?    Are they happy to let your external users see your internal systems (in general) and over a VPN or some other access control?  Are they ok with you opening up parts of a Confluence (as you can control access by space)?

Then you'll need to look at what you can do within their limits.  But, given "some people can see some stuff in our Confluence", you need to decide whether "the world can see it" is acceptable, and if it is not, then "give people the access they need, in the systems containing the data they need to work with"

[me]

@Nic Brough -Adaptavist- as you know couple of days ago log4j hit many companies, if some of these companies publish even restricted access to their instance probably can hit by attackers. Now question are these these companies accept this risk? Or simply separate internal from external? or sync internal or external in some way to reduce risk?

FYI: I’m talking about on-premise not cloud.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

I don't understand what that has to do with the question of whether you want to let people use your Confluence or not.

(The nature of the log4j attack means you can only be attacked by a Confluence user that you have given certain permissions to, so it's an irrelevance to this conversation)

[me]

@Nic Brough -Adaptavist- definitely normal user should able access to their own data. But when something like log4j occurred attacker able to get direct access to server shell bypass any waf or firewall, and run different command with root user.

[Andy Gladstone]

@me it really depends on how restricted you need that external access to be. 

The simplest method is to allow anonymous access to some spaces and pages, but that will allow anyone to view and access those pages. 

https://support.atlassian.com/confluence-cloud/docs/set-up-public-access/

Based on your question it seems like you may want to restrict access to specific external collaborators. Please confirm.

[me]

@Andy Gladstone Thanks for answer,

is it logical to do that? How other company like atlassian mange this situation?

as I mention we have different type of data on Internal one (confidential and non-confidential).

Any idea?