Inside Look: The Making of Virtru's Secure Share for Confluence

Without a doubt, Confluence has become a critical center for documentation and collaboration, especially for remote-first teams. However, its open nature also poses a challenge - sensitive information like passwords and API keys get exposed to more eyes than necessary when stored in shared Confluence spaces. Constantly moving these snippets out into separate documents ultimately defeats the purpose of having a consolidated knowledge base.

That’s the problem that Virtru’s product and engineering teams sought to solve when creating our latest secure file-sharing integration solution… Secure Share for Confluence.

“Historically, [Virtru] has focused on securing email and file sharing workflows. But Confluence presented a unique need,” explained Trevor Foskett, Virtru SVP of Solution Engineering. “Unlike transient emails, it contains living documents that teams constantly update. There was no good way to encrypt snippets of sensitive data without scattering information across multiple systems.”

Until now. To discuss Secure Share for Confluence from a product and engineering perspective, we brought together Virtru’s VP of Solutions Engineering Trevor Foskett, and VP of Product Management, Daniel Bennion to discuss why we created Secure Share for Confluence, what’s different about it, and how it can change your workflow.

Watch the full conversation by clicking the button below, or continue to read the recap.

How It Limits Exposure of Sensitive Data

Poor resource management can go beyond lack of organization skills. It boils down to a lack of control and a surplus of access.

“There may be a scenario where, the entire organization or entire group has access to this space,” outlined Bennion. “But I've got some information that I'd like to associate with a certain channel or space, but I really want to limit the exposure to that."

Virtru’s Secure Share integration allows Confluence users to keep their single source of truth without compromising security or privacy. By encrypting sensitive paragraphs right within Confluence pages, teams can finely control access to certain snippets like tester credentials or upcoming product announcement details.

Secure Share for Confluence also uses client-side encryption to lock down sensitive information before it ever touches Confluence servers. Granular access policies can restrict viewing to only certain users or groups within the organization.

Even Confluence's own AI content summarization features cannot peer into Secure Share encrypted sections.

Confluence includes AI summarization to outline key page content - but this doesn't work on Secure Share sections. Validation tests confirmed that even if an admin decrypts content, Confluence cannot interpret or summarize it. This ensures privacy from the platform itself.

This was engineered to give teams complete control and confidence to store proprietary concepts and credentials directly in relevant documentation instead of scattering data across multiple systems.

How It Handles Changing Data and Credentials

During early access testing for Virtru Secure Share for Confluence, teams mainly secured developer credentials for test environments and pre-launch product details. What was proven most valuable was the flexibility to update encrypted paragraphs as passwords and details change.

Unlike traditional encrypted emails and files, Secure Share encrypted content can be edited and updated over time. This flexibility mirrors the way teams constantly tweak Confluence pages to reflect new processes, launches, and other changes.

“So when you create this encrypted content, you're able to change who has access to it,” said Bennion. “You can add users to it, you could remove users as things change. And you can also update the content..."

Password rotations and API key updates also necessitate modifying access credentials stored in documentation. Secure Share enables encrypting whole sections with images, tables, and other native formatting for an integrated experience.

At Virtru, we’re eating our own kibble. According to Bennion, Virtru’s own product team relies on Virtru Secure Share for Confluence for securing tester account info and release notes.

How It Gives You Security Without Leaving Confluence

Secure Share for Confluence extends robust protection to collaborative work without interrupting employee workflows. Teams can store their most sensitive technical, financial, legal, and product documentation within relevant Confluence spaces without granting open access or moving data elsewhere.

Unlike Confluence's native binary access controls, Secure Share for Confluence allows granular encryption within shared spaces. Sensitive snippets stay visible only to approved teams rather than forcing content across multiple systems. Encryption applies securely at the point of collaboration instead of disrupting employee workflows. The integration offers targeted confidentiality, enabling access controls for selected snippets where work happens rather than broader all-or-nothing visibility.

And the cherry on top - no architectural modifications were needed in the development of Secure Share for Confluence. Secure Share leverages Confluence's existing API and encryption model to swap out the encrypted payload as users edit paragraphs. This provides native formatting and a seamless editor experience.

The integration offers the control to share information securely with exactly the right audience every time.

Find Secure Share for Confluence in the Atlassian Marketplace Today

Check out the Atlassian Marketplace to add military-grade security to your team's Confluence instance with just a few simple clicks.

Not ready to take the leap yet? We have a ton of ways you can learn more. You can read our Secure Share for Confluence walkthrough blog, watch our podcast about Secure Share for Confluence, or request a demo with our team today.