A root of trust may include one or more hardware components of an IHS (Information Handling System) that operate using validated hardware instructions. Once a root of trust has been established, it may be extended by validating additional components and the instructions by which these components operate. A chain of trusted boot components may be used to securely initialize a set of components required to support core functions of the IHS. In order to detect components of a trusted boot chain that have been compromised, boot chain components validate their own instructions as well as the instructions to be utilized by the next boot component and the instructions utilized by the prior boot component, thus providing bidirectional validation of trusted boot chain components.