✨ Various small helpers to reduce code duplication

[acabarbaye]

Description

• environment: Added utilities to help retrieving multiple variables from the environment
• hashing: Added utilities to help carrying out hashing calculations under the context protection

Test Coverage

• This change is covered by existing or additional automated tests.
• Manual testing has been performed (and evidence provided) as automated testing was not feasible.
• Additional tests are not required for this change (e.g. documentation update).