I discovered Gibson Research Corporation’s (www.grc.com) Shields UP! website today. Shields UP! is a utility that allows you to check how secure your connection is to the Internet. It’s easy to use: no registration is required and it’s web based, so there’s no files to download.
My machine passed the file sharing and common ports tests. After that, I decided to put Shields UP! to the test. I tested ShieldsUP! by activating XAMPP, a simple Apache distribution. I ran XAMPP because I knew that the machine would be insecure while it was running. It successfully displayed that ports 80 and 443 were open.
I’m not a computer security professional, so I don’t know how stringent these tests are. But, I like the idea that I can perform a hassle free security checkup on my computer.