Research and explain how modern day host based anti-virus software works. How does this protect us against unknown threats? What can we do to better protect our host machines against unknown threats? In todays computing environment, is anti-virus software still necessary?

Use these links below to help you get started: VirusTotal - This tool that was acquired by Google takes a file, hash, or website and scans it against 40 or so of the leading AV vendors. How would using this site for identifing suspicious files be more advantageous than scanning the same file with a local AV client? Is Antivirus a waste of money? - This article examines the usefulness of todays AV clients in the face of evolving malware sophistication.