A method for facilitating a provision of a certificate that securely verifies an identification of an application is provided. The method includes: validating a bootstrap identity that identifies the application at a time of invocation; generating a first token that is signed with a first private key and transmitting the signed first token to the application; receiving, from an external server, a request for a public key to be used for verifying the first private key; and transmitting the requested public key to the external server in order to prompt the external server to provide the certificate to the application. When prompted to provide the certificate to the application, the external server generates a second token that is signed with a second private key and transmits the certificate in conjunction with the signed second token to the application. The private keys are never shared with the application.