I'll be live and in person on your PC next week when I join Michel Prompt, CEO and founder of Radiant Logic, for an indepth look at how identity and virtualization can be leveraged to deliver context-driven security. Join us on Thursday, Oct. 20 at 2 p.m. EDT (that's 11 a.m. here on the left coast, 7 p.m. UTC) for a continuation of the conversation we began at last July's Catalyst Conference.

Among the topics we'll be exploring are:
* Current trend and evolution in identity and directory virtualization: from LDAP proxy to context servers.
* Typical use cases, including authentication, authorization, access to non-directory sources and federated identity.
* Model driven identity and directory virtualization.
* Context driven security.
* Serving context with optimal performance and high availability.

Context is emerging as one of the most important areas of both identity management and security management. Context can determine how an entity is perceived - its "persona," if you will. Context is also relevant to authorization transactions - the familiar mantra of who, what, where, when and how an attempt to access resources is made. But context is also relevant to the emerging discussion of personal identity, also called "user-centric" identity, where the user can define the context in which identity attributes are shared with others.

My part in this upcoming Webinar is to set the stage - to show where we've come from in using context for security and to introduce the discussion of where we're going. It promises to be both educational and entertaining. You'll need to register, so do that right now.

As I said, context will be at the core of identity discussions over the near term. For one example, see Phil Windley's (he's the author of the book "Digital Identity") comments on the context of identity credentials and how that can shape legislative activity.

Without context, things stand alone in a vacuum. As we learned in high school physics, nature abhors a vacuum. Join me online next week as we set the context.

Dave Kearns is a consultant and editor of IdM, the Journal of Identity Management.