Abstract
Data Provenance refers to the line of descent or the ancestry of information. It constitutes the origin of that data, along with some key events that occur over the course of its lifecycle. Additionally, some important details associated with the creation of that data, its processing and archiving are also a part of it. Such information is instrumental in determining how secure and trustworthy the data is. This is the primary reason why provenance is one important aspect of data security. Even in applications like Digital Forensics, provenance helps maintain a proper chain of custody by providing information about who collected the evidence, what procedure was followed, when and why it was collected and where it was stored. This report discusses provenance models and some existing environments and applications where provenance is used such as, a multi-level secure environment, sensor networks, and electronic data transfer. Other environments where provenance can be useful such as cloud and grid computing are not part of this report.