Editing Middleware (distributed applications) (section)

===Policy Appliances===
Policy appliance is a generic term referring to any form of middleware that manages policy rules. They can mediate between data owners or producers, data aggregators, and data users. Among heterogeneous institutional systems or networks they may be used to enforce, reconcile, and monitor agreed information management policies and laws across systems (or between jurisdictions) with divergent information policies or needs. Policy appliances can interact with smart data (data that carries with it contextual relevant terms for its own use), [[intelligent agent]]s (queries that are self-credentialed, authenticating, or contextually adaptive), or [[context awareness|context-aware]] applications to control information flows, protect security and confidentiality, and maintain privacy. Policy appliances support policy-based information management processes by enabling rules-based processing, selective disclosure, and accountability and oversight.<ref>{{Citation |title=Designing Technical Systems to Support Policy: Enterprise Architecture, Policy Appliances, and Civil Liberties |date=2010 |work=Emergent Information Technologies and Enabling Policies for Counter-Terrorism |url=https://doi.org/10.1109/9780470874103.ch22 |access-date=2025-04-28 |publisher=IEEE |isbn=978-0-470-87410-3}}</ref> 

Examples of policy appliance technologies for rules-based processing include analytic filters, [[Contextual searching|contextual search]], semantic programs, labeling and wrapper tools, and [[Digital rights management|DRM]], among others; policy appliance technologies for selective disclosure include anonymization, content personalization, subscription and publishing tools, among others; and, policy appliance technologies for accountability and oversight include [[authentication]], authorization, immutable and non-repudiable logging, and audit tools, among others.