The disclosure is directed to securely bootstrapping devices in a network environment. Methods and systems include hardware and/or operations for receiving, based on an identifier provisioned at a relying entity, instances of a security credential of an information system, wherein the instances are associated with respective certifying entities. The operations also include verifying the authenticity of the instances of the security credential using information of the certifying entities provisioned at the relying entity. The operations further includes determining matches between the instances of the security credential. Additionally, the operations include determining based on the matches that a first instance of the security credential satisfies a policy provisioned at the relying entity. Further, the operations include verifying the authenticity of information requested from the information system using the first instance of the security credential. In various implementations, the information system may be the domain name system.