Published articles across CrowdStrike and Pangea: from prompt injection and agentic tool-chain attacks to authentication and access control. The most recent are on CrowdStrike's blog.
Portfolio · 2026
Vanessa Myriah Villa.
Product Marketer & Technologist shaping the story around AI Security at CrowdStrike.
Workshops, conference talks, and podcasts across Fal.Con Gov 2026 and the CrowdTour Securing AI track.
Falcon AI Detection & Response, and AI Unlocked, the prompt-injection challenge co-launched in 2026.
Recent writing
All writing
Notes on AI security.
How Agentic Tool Chain Attacks Threaten AI Agent Security
Three attack vectors (tool poisoning, tool shadowing, rugpulls) manipulate AI agents' reasoning layers. What enterprise defenders can do about it today.
Read on CrowdStrikeAI Tool Poisoning: How Hidden Instructions Threaten AI Agents
Attackers are embedding malicious instructions in tool descriptions used via Model Context Protocol. Inside the threat model and the defenses that hold up.
Read on CrowdStrike
What I'm working on
Decoding prompt injection at CrowdStrike.
After CrowdStrike acquired Pangea in September 2025, Vanessa moved into AI Detection and Response as PMM, helping security teams reason about a new class of threats where the attacker's payload isn't malware, it's natural language.
Most recently she co-launched AI Unlocked: Decoding Prompt Injection, an interactive challenge that walks practitioners through three progressively harder environments (Command Center, Data Gateway, Nexus) to feel what a prompt-injection attack actually does. Concepts stick when you've had to defend against them.
Secure the AI Attack Surface & Stop Prompt Injection Attacks with Falcon AI Detection and Response. Workshop · Fal.Con Gov 2026 · Washington DC · Mar 17–18
Career
Full career
Hardware → cloud → AI security.
Product Marketing Manager · AIDR
PMM for AI Detection and Response (AIDR); co-created the AI Unlocked prompt-injection challenge; speaking at Fal.Con Gov 2026 in Washington DC.
Developer Advocate → Product Marketing Manager
Joined as Developer Advocate, then moved into PMM as Pangea scaled. Secure-by-Design education; DeveloperWeek 2024 talk; PodRocket podcast guest.
Software Engineer → Program Manager → IoT Developer Community PM
Skype for Mixed Reality, Azure IoT Central, Azure Maps integration, IoT Developer Community Program. Built a mentorship program template that scaled from 120 to 3,000 people.
Speaking
All speaking
Talks, workshops, & podcasts.
Workshop
Mar 17–18, 2026 · Washington DC
Secure the AI Attack Surface & Stop Prompt Injection Attacks with Falcon AI Detection and Response
Fal.Con Gov 2026 Conference Talk · Workshop Mar 10, 2026 · Fort LauderdaleSecure the AI Attack Surface & Stop Prompt Injection Attacks with Falcon AI Detection and Response
CrowdTour 2026 Conference Talk · Workshop Feb 26, 2026 · DenverSecure the AI Attack Surface & Stop Prompt Injection Attacks with Falcon AI Detection and Response
CrowdTour 2026
Video
All videos
Selected from 40+ produced.
About
Hardware-to-cloud-to-AI security.
Vanessa shapes how technical teams talk about complex, fast-moving security, without flattening the substance.
Vanessa studied Computer Engineering at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and shipped her first production code at Microsoft on Skype for Mixed Reality. Six years and four roles at Microsoft taught her to translate between hardware, cloud, and developer audiences.
From there: Developer Advocate, then Product Marketing Manager at Pangea, then PMM for AI Detection and Response (AIDR) at CrowdStrike after the September 2025 acquisition, writing about AI security threats few people have a vocabulary for yet. She works in English and Spanish, is passionate about mentorship in tech, and built a Microsoft mentorship program template that scaled from a 120-person pilot to 3,000 people.
Education
BS Computer Engineering
Cal Poly SLO · 2012–2016
Cal Poly SLO · 2012–2016
Languages
English · Spanish
Currently
CrowdStrike · AI Security
Writing on
Prompt injection
Agentic tool chains
Agentic tool chains
Recommendations
What colleagues say.
She is a hard working PM with a knack for distilling down problems into smaller bite size problems that can be tackled with ease… She would be an asset to any team in any organization.
She has a very personable on-camera presence… you will not only get someone who can wear multiple hats but will do so with tremendous skill and organization.
Vanessa worked effectively in the product trio of product manager, engineer and designer to deliver product features to general availability.