Firewall Test procedure

I am sure that there are other sites out there.

But this one;

http://grc.com/lt/howtouse.htm

Seams to be simple to use, and effective.

There also have been a few Tech Republic articles on hireing "hackers" to test your security.

Thereare several security software and test firms that have on-staff hackers.

Chas

If you are wanting to try them out look at Sonicwall:

http://www.sonicwall.com

They have a demo of their control panel that is identical to their product.

If you have a history of your systems being compromised from outside sources...hacking thru your firewall or other access control devices...consider putting up the sacrificial lamb so to speak. Set up a number of test servers and have different firewalls setup to protect them...then leave them online and see what happens, run an MD5 file checksum utility on them on a regular basis, also external logging that cannot be hacked...to let you know when they have been touched and some clues to how/where. Sure this may sound like total techie stuff...but read about it online and most all the programs are free utilities...all this if you have some time and dont want to spend big bucks on consultants.
Maybe consider a local technical school or university, and contact their various computer clubs, like a linux users group...and speak with them...Im sure for a small donation to the group...you would get plenty of tech advice and testing...you can get some amazing technical expertise from groups like this...that many times is above and beyond many consultant groups...and far cheaper.

also you can try the symantec test at the following location, it will test your overall access and weaknesses on the web the address is

http://www.symantec.com/securitycheck/

Perhaps one of the best sites I have found for testing firewall security performance, is a site owned by SYGATE. They have an outstanding on-line testing resource (free) to test the integritry of your firewall. Their address is:

http://scan.sygatetech.com/

Give this a try, It's complete and easy to select specific tests. I recommend all of the tests in order to get a complete picture about the performance of your firewall. All internal information should come back back with the test results of "stealthed". Anything areas that are still weak, will be identified by the test. Hope this helps.

To test effectivly you need to use the right tools and use a variety of them. Remeber the old saying when the only tool in your tool bag is a hammer evrything looks like a nail!

You can download a fairly complete set of penetration testing toolsat

http://wetelephant.cotse.com/tools/

For information on methods and procedures for testing firewall check out

http://rr.sans.org/penetration/penetration_list.php

for a set of articles and white papers on the subject. The home page of the SANS Reading Room is also excellent

http://rr.sans.org/index.php

Best regards
Jeremy

Not olny can you test your firewall but you can test your whole computer system for free at www.pcpitstop.com

It will give you tips and how to's to repair any falts in your system it may find.

It will tell you how your computer compares with similar computers with the same set up, Cache & uncache speed, internet speeds, browser security and more.

It also gives you a list of all your hardwear and its maufactuer and a lot more.

As in answer #1, Gibson Research Corp (GRC), is the best place to do your testing using the Shields Up!, Port Probe and LeakTest utilities on that site.
The Shields Up! and Port Probe are at - https://grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2
and the Leaktest program is at - http://grc.com/lt/leaktest.htm

NOTE: Shields Up! and Port Probe work from outside your system to test how outside hackers might enter. Leak Test is a small download that checks your vulnerability from an internal attack.

go to www.pcflank.com and look on the left side of teh page.

there are about 5 tests you can run to check your firewalls.

the 'advanced' and 'exploits' tests are the most informative.

the ideal shold be 'all ports stealthed'.

davod

My addition to the wonderful postings is to run NMAP against your firewall.
www.intrusion.org

If there is a hole in the firewall that should not be there, NMAP will determine it.

Now, if you are on a Windows machine (NMAP is UNIX/Linux only),then you can get a Windows port of NMAP (called NMAPNT) from the Eeye security group:
http://www.eeye.com/html/Research/Tools/nmapnt.html

hope this helps

It all depends on what you are planning your evaluation criteria on.

Here is an excellent whitepaper / methodology on penetration testing

http://www.ideahamster.org/osstmm.htm

Any firewall can be made to fail based on configurations . Be sure to exercise the least privilages model for your firewall. ( meaning turn everything off unless its absolutely required ) .

If you are looking to do throughput testing on the various platforms there are a number of good articles to take a look at
http://www.cerias.purdue.edu/coast/firewalls/fw-body.html