jira

What is Jira?

The Jira image packages Atlassian's Jira Software, the issue tracking and agile project management platform, so you can run a self-managed instance in a container. Jira is used by software, IT, and business teams to plan work, track issues, run scrum and kanban boards, manage releases, and automate workflows, and it integrates with source control, CI/CD, and Confluence. The image runs the Jira Java application, listens on port 8080 by default, stores its data in an external relational database such as PostgreSQL, and keeps attachments, indexes, and configuration in a home directory that is mounted as a persistent volume. It is used by engineering and IT teams running Jira themselves, and by platform teams operating it on Docker or Kubernetes with a reproducible, version-pinned image.

What is Echo's Jira image?

Echo's Jira image is a hardened build of Jira on Echo's hardened base. Echo images are designed to be a drop-in replacement: swap the image reference in your Dockerfile or deployment manifest and CVEs go to zero without disrupting your dbconfig.xml, database connections, marketplace apps, and the Jira home directory. Every image is tested across clouds, image use cases, and deployment targets. Echo ships every image in two variants:

• Distroless variant — optimized for runtime use, with the smallest possible attack surface
• Default variant — includes essential build tools, package managers, and shells for teams that need operational access

For production Jira deployments, the distroless variant keeps all runtime operations — issue processing, workflow execution, search indexing, and user authentication — fully intact while minimizing exposure; the default variant suits IT and platform teams that need shell access for inspecting application logs, adjusting JVM settings, or troubleshooting plugins and indexing.

What is the difference between Echo's Jira image and the public Jira image?

Public Jira images ship on bases that include OS-level tooling convenient for development but which contribute CVEs that accumulate on a project management application used in production. Jira images run continuously with access to project and issue data, user credentials, session data, and database credentials. OS-level CVEs in the base image — particularly in libraries such as openssl, libxml2, fontconfig, and the libraries bundled with the JVM — create exploitable paths that bypass application-layer controls entirely, allowing attackers to move from a network-reachable service to host-level access. For teams running Jira across many environments, the image is also a steady source of scanner noise in the CI pipeline — every package in the base becomes a finding your security team must triage, even when none of it is reachable from the service. Echo's build retains everything Jira needs for issue processing, workflow execution, search indexing, and user authentication while removing the packages that don't belong in a production Jira project management application. As we covered in our post on how to protect your company from software supply chain attacks, long-running services that hold sensitive data and listen on the network are among the widest attack surfaces in the container stack. Echo commits to a 7-day SLA for critical and high severity vulnerabilities, and 10 days for medium, low, and unknown — with vulnerabilities triaged within 24 hours. Echo images are recognized by all major scanners and mirrored to all major registries, so they fit into existing pipelines without changing your registry, scanner, or runtime tooling.

FAQ

Can I replace my Jira image with Echo's Jira image?

Yes. Echo's Jira image is a drop-in replacement. Update the FROM line in your Dockerfile and your workloads keep running. Database connections, the Jira home directory, SSO and LDAP settings, workflows, marketplace apps, and reverse proxy configuration all continue to work without changes to your projects, issues, or user data.

Is Echo's Jira image FIPS-validated?

Yes. Echo's FIPS-validated images use cryptographic modules with an active FIPS 140-3 CMVP certificate, making them fit for federal use — unlike FIPS-compliant images that haven't been validated. This matters for teams running Jira workloads inside FedRAMP boundaries, where a project management application that serves internal project data and authenticates users, often through SSO must meet cryptographic requirements across the full stack — including the OpenSSL and TLS libraries bundled with the Jira image.

What is Echo's vulnerability management SLA on the Jira image?

Echo commits to a 7-day SLA for critical and high severity vulnerabilities, and 10 days for medium, low, and unknown — with vulnerabilities triaged within 24 hours. Patches are mirrored automatically into your private registry so you're always running a clean version — critical for a long-running service that holds project and issue data, user credentials, session data, and database credentials and is reachable over the network.

Is Echo's Jira image distroless?

Echo ships every image in two variants: a distroless variant optimized for runtime use, and a default variant that includes essential build tools, package managers, and shells. For production Jira deployments, the distroless variant is the leaner, more secure choice; for IT and platform teams that need shell access for inspecting application logs, adjusting JVM settings, or troubleshooting plugins and indexing, the default variant is the right fit.

How does Echo achieve such a drastic CVE reduction in Jira?

Echo's Jira image is built from source with only the absolute essentials needed to run the Jira project management application, which significantly shrinks the attack surface. Echo also patches aggressively over time, with backports available so you can stay on the Jira version your applications and their dependencies are certified against — avoiding a disruptive upgrade forced purely by OS-level vulnerabilities in the base image rather than by your own requirements.

Will Echo's Jira image help us achieve FedRAMP?

Yes. The hard parts of FedRAMP — managing vulnerabilities, applying fixes, and using FIPS-validated cryptography — are baked into Echo images, including STIG-hardened configuration and ConMon/POA&M-ready reporting. For IT and platform teams running Jira under an ATO — whether that's engineering issue tracking, IT service workflows, or program management for a regulated environment — Echo's hardened Jira image keeps the project management application layer in-boundary and compliant without requiring custom hardening scripts or manual base image patching between compliance cycles.

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