What is Context?

Context describes: how does this person relate to other people, objects, or services within the enterprise ecosystem? Contextual insight into relationships across systems enables the organization to strengthen security and better serve its consumers. All relevant information about identity that can be linked and exposed based on relationships in the data. Take a person entry as an example; the more attributes available in the person’s entry offers more context about that person (personal information, projects they are working on, who their manager is…etc.). Model driven virtualization lets us detect and represent contextual information from across application and data silos, delivering a deeper understanding of how all enterprise information interrelates.

What can we use Context for?

Context is key for implementing fine grained access control and other security initiatives. Gathering and representing context from across the enterprise to make better security decisions is the first application. And just as model-driven virtualization can externalize identity out of data sources for security, it can also liberate contextual data from the constraints of data silos—and make it accessible to business people.