Embodiments of the present invention include determining whether a cryptographic certificate can be trusted. A cryptographic certificate is received at a client device. The client device performs a first check on a first set of attributes of the cryptographic certificate. In addition, the client device sends the cryptographic certificate to a central verification server, which performs a second check on a second set of attributes of the cryptographic certificate. In the case that the first set of attributes passes the first check, and the second set of attributes passes the second check, the client device determines that the cryptographic certificate can be trusted.