by Ted Mahsun, (@TedMahsun)
Confluence makes collaborating with your team easy. But there are cases where you may want to share private information on a Confluence page that you would want to keep secure and away from prying eyes.
The Confluence add-on Security and Encryption's introduces a new feature that helps you with exactly this. In Version 2.2.5 of Security and Encryption, we have introduced a new macro called "Secure". The Secure macro allows encryption of plain text of up to 255 characters and is super easy to use.
Why would you use this? Let's say you'd want to share a password with your team mates but would not want the password to be displayed along with the rest of the contents of the page when it is printed or exported, then the Secure macro is perfect for this.
To use the Secure macro:
- Create a Secure macro by typing
{secure}in the editor. - When the Insert "Secure" Macro pop-up window appears, enter the Title, Secret and Timeout parameters.
(For more information on the parameters, check out the Secure Macro Reference page on our documentation site.)
- Click Insert and you'll have this shiny blue button:
- Any user with access to the page can click the button but clicking on the button will result in the following pop-up window:
- After the user enters his or her Confluence password, the secret text that was encrypted will be revealed, but only for a limited window of time, depending on the Timeout parameter. (It is also possible to display it indefinitely, if the Timeout parameter is set to 0.)
As you can see, the Secure macro is pretty easy to use. We designed it with your convenience in mind while making sure security was a priority. In fact, your data is kept as secure as possible all along the way to Confluence, the database, and back.
Throughout the whole process, this data – we call this "Secure Info" – is encrypted using PGP, AES and other security measures. None of the Secure Info is actually stored in plain text on the page or on the database. The Secure Info is client specific and is only used to reconfirm the identity and reauthenticate the requesting user plus it is also not indexed and not searchable.
