Security experts have launched a new research website featuring a detailed malware encyclopaedia, a world threat atlas and advice relating to the geographic distribution of threats.

Threat Expert has been developed by the same team who created PC Tools' flagship Spyware Doctor.

Kurt Baumgartner and Sergei Shevchenko, chief security researchers on the project, claim that the site provides rapid, detailed descriptions and analysis of the behavioural effects and changes that malware makes to a computer on infection.

This includes viruses, worms, Trojans, adware and other security-related risks.

"Threat Expert marks a new era in malware detection as it produces reports with the level of technical detail that exceeds antivirus industry standards," said Simon Clausen, chief executive at Threat Expert.

"Threat Expert can analyse and generate up to 1,000 highly detailed threat descriptions per server per day. This provides for virtually unlimited scalability to handle hundreds of thousands of threats a day."

Clausen explained that combating malware is no longer about populating databases with new signatures, but about dealing with the constant influx of new threats.

Threat Expert claims to be able to 'trick' a threat into communicating across a simulated network and recording its behaviour in minutes.

System administrators, industry experts and the media can then use Threat Expert to identify new threats and minimise the impact of infection on a computer or network, according to its creators.