ICSA Lab Tests re Firewalls

Here is the link to FW's who have been evaluated by icsalabs which I pulled out of the stickies. It is clearly a skimpy list.

http://www.icsalabs.com/products?tid[]=4220&tid_2[]=4456&tid_2[]=4231&tid_2[]=4455&tid_2[]=4459&tid_2[]=4239&tid_2[]=4234&tid_2[]=4238&x=23&y=14&=Apply

Everybody can draw their own conclusions.

 

Seems a rather crappy and pointless page - its not a test, just a list of who ICSA has have a sticker of approval to... think most can pass, its mainly dependent on which vendors have asked (and probabily paid) to be certified.

 

The few reports that you do see tend to be focused more towards the larger commercial products rather than for personal software firewalls.. Looks like a gap in the market - maybe one or two people on Wilders might see it as a challenge.... (I know that's not what you are talking about re independent labs)

 

I'm in agreement in principle.

Some individuals here would be able to contribute to the development of a non vendor based set of design standards for retail level firewalls. But, IMHO they would have to "work" outside of Wilder's somehow.

Meanwhile, I'm going to assume that this is not a new issue and that such standards do exist so I'm going to hunt for them. I started tonight. Nothing to report yet.

An example of a simple standard are the eicar test virus files we can use to test if our AV's work at all! External Test such as shields up etc do exist for FW's and in the absence of anything else should be used. They at least give the user a set of results they can use to ask questions of their vendor.