I had an enjoyable conversation last week with Doug Leland, general manager of Microsoft's Identity and Security Business Group and Chris Young, RSA senior vice president of products. It was enjoyable because they talked about my favorite subjects, context and identity - but in a new way.

We discussed last week's announcement of an expanded technology partnership between the two companies to integrate RSA's Data Loss Prevention (DLP) classification technology with the Microsoft platform. Specifically, RSA's DLP Suite 6.5 - due out later this month - will be engineered to integrate tightly with Microsoft Active Directory Rights Management Services (RMS) in Windows Server 2008.

DLP is a technology and system to centrally define information security policy, automatically identify and classify sensitive data virtually anywhere in the infrastructure, and use a range of controls to protect data at the endpoints, network, and data center. RMS is a service that uses identity information to control rights to digital assets.

This agreement brings together identity-, context- and content-based security. You could say that it ‘contextivizes’ identity or ‘identifizes’ context but, either way, it not only improves security but also improves its usability.

In the not-too-distant future, the use of data will be determined at “run time” by a matrix of information: what’s the content, who wants to use it, where will they use it, what do they want to use it for, when is it being used and even how (i.e., what platform) is it being used. And, rather than a simple yes/no answer, the system will extend the pre-calculated rights (read, write, modify, delete, copy, etc.) for that data within that context.

This is what we’ve been driving towards in rights management for more than 20 years. It isn’t quite nirvana yet, but it does take us higher up the mountain. You definitely want to explore this further.

UPCOMING EVENT: SailPoint is presenting an online case study, “Improving SOX Compliance in 60 Days across 29 Applications”on Dec. 17 at 10 a.m. - 11 a.m. CST. Here's SailPoint's description: "One of the top 15 banks in the world is working with SailPoint to improve its compliance performance and overall risk posture. SailPoint delivered with an identity governance solution and within 60 days, the bank had launched a fully-automated access certification process across 29 SOX-relevant applications. The deployment included cleansing and centralizing identity data for over 25,000 users. This Webinar will provide an overview of the customer's challenges, business requirements and deployment process." Register here.

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