The invention relates to a method for determining device criticality in a computer system comprising the steps of building a component hierarchy graph using computer configuration information; labeling the nodes of component hierarchy graph with redundancy attribute; traversing the component hierarchy graph; and determining whether the device loses an access path by inspecting the redundancy attributes within the component hierarchy graph. Furthermore, one of a plurality of severity levels is assigned to each identified affected resource based on predetermined criteria. The severity levels include a low severity level, a medium severity level, and a high severity level. Each severity level represents degree of impact to the computer system if functionality of the identified affected resource became unavailable.