to facilitate security related decision making in one form of this embodiment a firewall or router handles a connection request or maintenance of a connection based on the configuration information stored in the database that relates to one or both of the devices involved in the transmission in one embodiment database 146 includes vulnerability and remediation information such that for at least one vulnerability multiple methods of remediating the vulnerability are specified when the system has occasion to implement or offer remediation of a vulnerability all known alternatives are presented that are relevant to the device or machine 39 s particular configuration or setup for example when a vulnerability of a device is presented to an administrator the administrator is given a choice among the plurality of remediation options to remediate the vulnerability in some embodiments the administrator can select a preferred type of remediation that will be applied if available and a fallback type for example an administrator may select application of a policy setting over installation of a software patch so that the risk of disruption of critical business systems is minimized in other embodiments an administrator or other user is presented with a set of user interface elements that identify multiple options for remediating and identifying the vulnerability the administrator or user selects the method to be used and that remediation is applied to the vulnerable device s fig5 a is a flow chart of a filtering proxy method according to one embodiment of the present invention in use a database.