Neighbor discovery is used to create a generic trust database for other applications. As part of the neighbor discovery, each device performs classification and validation of the credentials of the neighboring devices. The credentials and validation results are stored locally without having to perform a separate authentication step. The trust database is created and maintained as a neighbor table with the results of the validation. The generic trust database may then be consulted by other protocols. The neighbor discovery may use any of various underlying protocols, but the resulting table unifies the results such that other applications or protocols may take advantage of the secured identity without having to implement their own discovery process. Both discovery and validation may be implemented locally without relying on centralized servers. Manual configuration may be avoided.