Host performence: security and speed

How do I check my hosts speed performence?

Are there any benchmarks that I can check it against (the host is running Apache and I am using PHP).

Also, are there any tests I can carry out on the security of my mySQL database? I'm not familiar with trying to hack into sensitive information(email addresses, I would never store CC details), so how do I make sure that my host is taking all the appropriate safeguards?

For starters does the host have a full access root account for mysql without a password? does he setup individual accounts and DB-specific permissions for users? some things for php... is PHP in safe mode? upload function? script execution time limit? resource usage limits?

Somethings u might not be able to tell but you can get some idea from running a php script with nothing but phpinfo();

Probably some other things but this is a start and I'm sleepy