1. A system, comprising: a BIOS residing on a gaming machine to configure the gaming machine at startup, wherein at least a portion of the BIOS includes an access key to at least partially validate a resource for loading within the gaming machine during the startup; and a digital certificate accessible to the gaming machine during the startup and the digital certificate is incomplete and incapable of being validated, wherein the digital certificate is adapted to be at least partially validated at the startup via the access key included in the BIOS by adding the access key to padded characters in the digital certificate to complete the digital certificate for validation, and wherein validation of the resource depends on successful validation of the digital certificate, the digital certificate completed by the BIOS supplying the access key within the digital certificate at locations for the padded characters.