Having acquired security credentials, the two communicating peers establish a security context using their credentials. Although the peers establish a single joint context, each peer maintains its own local copy of the context. Context establishment involves the initiating peer authenticating itself to the accepting peer. The initiator optionally may request mutual authentication, in which case the acceptor authenticates itself to the initiator.
When context establishment is complete, the established context embodies state information (such as shared cryptographic keys) that enable subsequent secure message exchange between the two peers.