Abstract: Described herein are a method and system for analyzing the security of a computer network. According to various implementations, there is a device adapter associated with each device that has a significant impact on the security of the network (e.g., routers, switches, gateways, or “significant hosts”). The device adapter, which may be implemented as a piece of software executing remotely from the device, queries the device to determine what its security settings are (e.g., its firewall rules). The device adapter conducts the query using whichever form of communication the device requires (e.g., telnet, HTTP) and using whichever command set the device requires. Each type of device on the network has a software model associated with it. For example, there may be a router model, a switch model, a firewall model, and a gateway model. The model is made up of a series of rule sets. Each rule set includes rules that are derived from the configuration of the device (obtained by the device adapter).