Patent ID: 8832224

Claim:
A method comprising the steps of: receiving contextual data associated with a given data object at a first device, wherein the first device is a centralized point of monitoring for one or more data streams entering or leaving a given network and the one or more data streams are associated with one or more devices in the given network, and the contextual data is received from one or more devices outside the given network that have at least one of created the given data object and accessed the given data object, wherein the contextual data is automatically associated with the given data object by agent program code resident on at least one of the one or more devices outside the given network and separate from the given data object, and the contextual data is automatically registered with the first device; and using, at the first device, at least a portion of the received contextual data to track one or more locations of the given data object to generate at least one of provenance data and chain of custody data for the given data object such that the monitoring provided by the first device is extended to the one or more devices outside the given network; wherein the receiving and using steps are performed by a processor coupled to a memory.