How to enable two factor authentication for centralized user management (withno domain verification)

[Peter van Wonderen]

Good morning,

How can you enable two factor authentication in Jira and Confluence when you have a domain from Atlassian and are not able to verify your own domain.

We have centralized user management. But I can not verify my domain because it is an Atlassian domain. And without domain verification I can not go to the step of enabling two factor authentication.

Does anybody know how this works when you do not have your own domain for Jira and Confluence?

[Utkarsh Agarwal]

Hi @Peter van Wonderen 

Welcome to the community!

It sounds like there’s some confusion between the site URL domain (e.g., yourcompany.atlassian.net) and the email domain (e.g., @yourcompany.com). To enable 2FA using Atlassian Access, you need to verify your email domain, not the Atlassian site URL domain. Let me break this down:

1. What You’re Verifying:

   • You need to claim and verify your email domain (e.g., yourcompany.com) to manage all accounts that use emails with that domain.
   • You cannot claim Atlassian-managed domains like @atlassian.com or the atlassian.net URL used for your Jira instance.

2. Why Domain Verification Is Needed:

   • Domain verification ensures that you are the administrator for all accounts with your email domain.
   • Once verified, you can enforce 2FA and other security policies for all managed accounts under your organization.

3. How to Verify Your Email Domain:

   • Go to admin.atlassian.com and navigate to Security > Domain Verification.
   • Follow the steps to verify your domain (this usually involves adding a TXT record to your DNS).

4. What If You Use an Atlassian-Managed Domain?

   • If your email domain is an Atlassian-managed domain (e.g., @atlassian.com), you won’t be able to claim it because Atlassian controls it.
   • In that case, you won’t need to set up domain-level policies—2FA will already be handled by Atlassian for their accounts.

5. Still Confused?

   • Check the domain of your email address (e.g., john.doe@company.com), not the site URL (company.atlassian.net).
   • If you’re trying to manage personal accounts or accounts outside your domain, you won’t be able to enforce 2FA across them.

Let me know if this clears things up, or if you have any further questions!

Kind Regards

Utkarsh