The Human Side of Cybersecurity with Aaron Stanley, Head of Security at DBT Labs

Episode notes

In this episode of The Human Side of Cybersecurity, Dan Desko, Founder & CEO of Echelon Risk + Cyber, speaks with Aaron Stanley, Head of Security at DBT Labs, about what the security role becomes once the focus shifts away from tooling and toward long-term leadership. Aaron reflects on a career shaped less by titles and more by persistent questions around privacy, trust, and accountability—an outlook that frames security as an ongoing responsibility rather than a discrete function. The discussion explores formative leadership moments that reshaped how Aaron builds teams, including a hard lesson learned when an application security organization faltered after leaning too heavily into an engineering-first model. The conversation also challenges familiar enterprise security patterns, from the real return on phishing simulations to overly granular access controls, and reframes burnout as a leadership signal tied to disengagement and lack of visible impact. For those earlier in their careers, Aaron offers a grounded perspective on the role itself: meaningful progress in security comes from influencing people, shaping culture, and playing the long game.