Atlassian’s FedRAMP Certification: What’s the Big Deal?
Mar 20, 2025
Atlassian announced in early 2025 that Atlassian Government Cloud achieved FedRAMP Moderate authorization. That is a pretty big deal if you work in or around the public sector, because it means Jira Software, Confluence, and Jira Service Management are now much easier to justify for U.S. federal agencies and contractors that have strict cloud requirements.
TL;DR Takeaways
- Atlassian Government Cloud achieved FedRAMP Moderate authorization in March 2025
- FedRAMP is a government security standard that certifies cloud services for federal use
- Public sector teams have a clearer path to Atlassian Cloud, but migration is still going to be the hard part
- Atlassian has plans for FedRAMP High and DoD IL5 certifications
What Is FedRAMP and Why Does It Matter?
Essentially, FedRAMP (Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program) is a U.S. government program that sets security standards for cloud service providers. If a SaaS product wants to be used by federal agencies, it usually needs to go through this process. There are three levels of FedRAMP authorization: Low, Moderate, and High, depending on the sensitivity of the data the service is expected to handle.
Atlassian achieved FedRAMP Moderate, which should be suitable for a lot of federal use cases but not necessarily the most sensitive workloads (at least this is what the internet tells me, I’m by no means an expert). If Atlassian wants to support more sensitive government work in the future, they’ll need FedRAMP High and, for some defense use cases, DoD impact-level authorizations. Those are apparently much more painful processes.
The practical impact is that U.S. government agencies and their contractors have one less reason to stay on on-prem tools. For years, a lot of federal and regulated teams stuck with Data Center or Server-style deployments because the cloud offerings weren’t approved for their environment. With FedRAMP Moderate, Atlassian Cloud is at least in the conversation for a whole new set of customers.
What’s Next?
This is a great first step, but it’s not the end of the road. Atlassian has already announced plans to pursue FedRAMP High, which would make its Cloud offerings viable for more sensitive government workloads. That matters for agencies and contractors that need stronger controls than Moderate provides.
Atlassian has also expressed interest in DoD IL5, which matters for Department of Defense work and the contractors supporting it. Much like FedRAMP High, that is a complicated process that could take years. But it’s not surprising. If Atlassian is trying to get everyone onto Cloud, which has been their obvious business goal for some time now, they need a credible path for the public sector too.