Aspects of the disclosed technology relate to ways to authenticate customer/subscriber access to a policy update stream. A process of the technology can include steps for instantiating a network monitoring device in response to a request, the request comprising one or more configuration parameters for the network monitoring device, and receiving a first certificate from the network monitoring device, wherein the first certificate is based on the one or more configuration parameters. In some aspects, the steps can further include sending the first certificate to a processing pipeline for authentication, wherein the processing pipeline is configured to authenticate the first certificate based on a second certificate received by the processing pipeline from the network monitoring device. Systems and machine readable media are also provided.