Secunia has expanded its extremely popular free security alert service to viruses as from Tuesday.

The security company will compile the very latest news and information on virus threats from seven anti-virus vendors, providing useful links and easy-to-understand explanation for each virus under one banner.

Virus information will be updated every minute, Secunia's CEO Niels Henrik Rasmussen told us, and a threat rating will be decided based on an average of four of the vendors -- we are presuming F-Secure, Network Associates, Symantec and Trend Micro.

The list stretches back 18 months, Rasmussen explained, and will simplify companies' tasks by giving them a single resource to check while keeping their networks up to date. "We also tie up the different virus aliases, " said Rasmussen, "which reduces the difficulty of keeping track of them all."

"Today it isn't enough to have an anti-virus scanner and check your email," read a statement by the company, "because viruses spread so fast that most people haven't updated their anti-virus program when the first virus hits their inbox."

Rasmussen was insistent that Secunia will continue to make the service free, in the same way it does for its lauded security alert service. "We have two fundamental values," Rasmussen told us. "That this information - security, and now viruses -- be made available to everyone free of charge. And secondly, that it is available in real-time -- not provided the paying customers first and then to others second."

Secunia makes its money from charging customers to have its reports delivered in a customized way to sysadmins. You can check out the virus listing on Secunia's front page.