How Compliance Teams Use Secure Custom Fields

Compliance teams are responsible for ensuring that internal processes align with data protection regulations, security frameworks, and company policies.

Whether you’re preparing for a GDPR audit, tracking SOC 2 controls, or enforcing internal governance, Jira is often the platform where everything comes together.

But Jira is designed for openness, not selective access.

That’s a challenge when you need to protect:

• Policy justifications
• Risk assessment scores
• Security review statuses
• Audit logs and internal approvals

Once someone can see the issue, they can usually see every field. And that makes it difficult to enforce “need-to-know” visibility, a cornerstone of compliance.

Secure Custom Fields for Jira enables compliance teams to control access at the field level, helping teams document securely, collaborate with confidence, and meet audit standards without sacrificing efficiency.

The Challenge: Collaboration and compliance don’t always align

Compliance-related fields in Jira issues might include:

• Risk ratings
• PII handling notes
• Exception justifications
• Audit sign-offs
• Sensitive approval timestamps

These fields are often added to existing issues that are visible to other teams like engineering, security, or operations. The result?

• Sensitive fields are unintentionally exposed
• Risk of privacy breaches or internal audit findings
• Manual workarounds like spreadsheets, redactions, or duplicated issues

Secure Custom Fields for Jira solves this by letting you define who sees what, within the same issue.

Why field-level visibility matters for compliance

Compliance teams must be able to:

• Restrict access to fields based on role, group, or user
• Document decisions in the issue, not in spreadsheets
• Avoid unnecessary exposure of internal governance data
• Track and prove who had access to what, and when

Secure Custom Fields for Jira enables field-level access control, so compliance teams can stay embedded in the workflow, without compromising confidentiality or control.

How Compliance Teams use Secure Custom Fields

Step 1: Identify audit-sensitive fields that need to be controlled

Start by reviewing the types of structured compliance data your team tracks inside Jira. These are often required for audits, internal reviews, or legal documentation.

Common examples of compliance-sensitive fields:

• Regulatory Risk Score
• Security Review Status
• Exception Justification
• PII Handling Notes
• Compliance Approval Timestamp
• Audit Notes (Internal Use Only)

Ask yourself:

• Who needs access to each of these fields?
• Who should be restricted, even if they’re on the issue?

Step 2: Configure role-based field visibility

With Secure Custom Fields for Jira, you can secure each of these fields based on:

• Project roles (e.g., Compliance, Security, Engineering)
• Groups (e.g., DPOs, Internal Auditors, Legal)
• Specific users (for escalations or reviewers)

Example visibility configuration:

This ensures transparency where it’s needed, and protection where it matters.

Step 3: Use secured custom fields to strengthen governance and support audit-readiness

Whether you’re preparing for internal audits or external assessments, Secure Custom Fields for Jira gives compliance teams the tools to:

• Enforce least-privilege access
• Maintain access logs and visibility controls
• Demonstrate proper documentation for external audits
• Align with frameworks like GDPR, HIPAA, ISO 27001, and SOC 2

Instead of building extra layers of admin or tech debt, you can rely on built-in controls inside your existing Jira workflows.

💡 Bonus tip

Automate visibility based on governance triggers

With Jira Automation, you can pair Secure Custom Fields for Jira with triggers that change field visibility as issues evolve.

Example automations:

• If Compliance Review Status = “Failed,” alert Security and restrict field access
• When Exception Approved = Yes, reveal Justification Notes to Legal
• Automatically hide Audit Notes when the issue transitions to “Resolved”

This reduces manual oversight and ensures visibility rules keep pace with your governance workflow.

TLDR

• Jira doesn’t support field-level security by default; creating risks for compliance teams
• Secure Custom Fields for Jira lets you restrict access to fields like audit notes, exception justifications, and risk scores
• Automate visibility based on workflow stages or approval outcomes
• Keep compliance documentation in one issue, without compromising governance
• Helps compliance teams stay audit-ready, policy-aligned, and collaboration-friendly

Ready to make Jira work for your compliance requirements?

Secure Custom Fields for Jira gives compliance teams the visibility control they need, without adding friction to collaboration.

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