About This Webinar
Prepare for the 2026–27 launch of College Board’s AP Cybersecurity course in this immersive, hands-on workshop. Teachers will be introduced to the AP Cybersecurity course framework, and be enrolled in a demo course section to experience interactive activities. Teachers will also get an early look at the CodeHS Cyber Range, a secure sandbox where students master Linux commands, interact with simulations and solve Capture The Flag (CTF) challenges.
Explore the brand-new AP Cyber Security course and Cyber Range from CodeHS in this webinar overview. Learn about the five comprehensive course units aligned directly with College Board frameworks, discover interactive lab simulations, and see how the interactive Linux sandbox prepares students.
Full Transcript
Read the complete transcript of this webinar
Hello and welcome everyone to our sneak peek of CodeHS's AP Cyber Security and the Cyber Range. Welcome. As we come in here, feel free to drop in the chat where you're from, what you're teaching now, and what you'll be doing next year. We'll give folks a minute or two to get in before we get started. You'll see there's a link to the slides if you want to open them up and follow along, and the permissions should be open for you now.
We are going to be exploring the new AP Cyber Security course and the new CodeHS Cyber Range today. The team working on this includes professional development specialists, curriculum developers, and technical project managers who have been working tirelessly on the course, the cyber range, and the teaching curriculum. We're really excited to talk through things with you all.
Our agenda today includes a high-level overview of CodeHS for anyone who is not familiar, a deep dive into what we've got in the AP Cyber Security course itself, a look at the teaching cohort we're offering for anyone who wants more in-depth coverage and preparation, and a wrap-up on the CodeHS Cyber Range we're launching along with this course. If you do have questions, feel free to hop into the Q&A area where our team will monitor and respond. If you are currently not a CodeHS teacher, you can join us by signing up for a free account to check out the course and access all of our curriculum. CodeHS is a comprehensive platform for teaching computer science K through 12, providing web-based curriculum, teacher tools, extensive grading, and tracking with no additional plugins required.
Our core focus today is teaching AP Cyber Security. It is a complex and intensive college-level course aligned directly to the College Board course and exam description standards for the school year. The course outline consists of five units: Introduction to Security, Securing Spaces, Securing Networks, Securing Devices, and Securing Applications and Data. Each unit features a variety of topics, spanning approximately 130 recommended class periods total based on a 45-minute class layout, covering 414 standards.
In Unit One, Introduction to Security, students are introduced to how adversaries compromise systems via social engineering, weak authentication, and public Wi-Fi risks, alongside how AI is used in both cyber attacks and cyber defense. Lessons include activities like investigating network logs to identify password attacks, interacting with AI tools using prompt injection techniques in the Gandalf challenge, writing original fictional cyber attack narratives, and working through interactive worksheets regarding human expert review in AI-assisted defense.
Unit Two focuses on Securing Spaces, which covers physical security. Over approximately 21 class periods, students study cyber foundations, physical vulnerabilities, and strategies for protecting and detecting physical attacks. They practice drafting fishing emails to understand psychological manipulation and complete the coffee shop consultant capstone project to conduct risk assessments and design layered defense-in-depth plans. The content uses interactive HTML notes to keep students engaged and test their understanding with formative questions. Projects in this course are structured either to build over multiple lessons or to be self-contained within their own dedicated lesson blocks.
Unit Three handles Securing Networks, spanning approximately 26 class periods. Students learn how defenders protect data in transit, analyze common network attacks like DNS poisoning or spoofing, configure wireless security, manage network segmentation, and place firewalls using access control lists. Interactive widgets allow students to fix misconfigured wireless access points and design segmented subnet networks for realistic school environments to contain potential damage.
Unit Four covers Securing Devices, including computers, mobile phones, and internet of things devices. Over 23 class periods, students explore device vulnerabilities, malware, password hashing, and anti-malware software settings. They take on the role of a junior security analyst in a high school data breach project to investigate failed login attempts, evaluate single-factor authentication, simulate patch management choices over a 30-day scenario, and execute guided authentication log analyses to distinguish brute force from credential stuffing.
Unit Five is our longest unit, spanning 30 class periods to cover Securing Applications and Data. Students explore file vulnerabilities, configure access controls on a Linux system using least privilege principles, and use symmetric and asymmetric cryptography. They get hands-on experience using browser-based RSA encryption simulations to manage public and private keys and run SHA-256 hash commands in command-line environments like bash or PowerShell to verify file integrity.
In addition to the curriculum, we are offering an expert-led online professional development cohort starting in July. This cohort includes five live sessions, asynchronous chat support, and student-level access to the range to help teachers stay ahead of their students, plan their first year, master core frameworks like the CIA triad, and prepare for the FRQ portion of the exam.
The fully integrated CodeHS Cyber Range allows students to launch capture the flag style challenges using real sandbox Linux virtual machines directly from their lessons, syncing rosters automatically and passing grades right back to the teacher gradebook. It features hints, solution guides, badges, a class leaderboard, an extra catalog of over 90 challenges for high-flyers, and an extensive command-line reference sheet. The AP Cyber Security course is officially live in the course catalog today for you to add to your classes and explore.
We are going to be exploring the new AP Cyber Security course and the new CodeHS Cyber Range today. The team working on this includes professional development specialists, curriculum developers, and technical project managers who have been working tirelessly on the course, the cyber range, and the teaching curriculum. We're really excited to talk through things with you all.
Our agenda today includes a high-level overview of CodeHS for anyone who is not familiar, a deep dive into what we've got in the AP Cyber Security course itself, a look at the teaching cohort we're offering for anyone who wants more in-depth coverage and preparation, and a wrap-up on the CodeHS Cyber Range we're launching along with this course. If you do have questions, feel free to hop into the Q&A area where our team will monitor and respond. If you are currently not a CodeHS teacher, you can join us by signing up for a free account to check out the course and access all of our curriculum. CodeHS is a comprehensive platform for teaching computer science K through 12, providing web-based curriculum, teacher tools, extensive grading, and tracking with no additional plugins required.
Our core focus today is teaching AP Cyber Security. It is a complex and intensive college-level course aligned directly to the College Board course and exam description standards for the school year. The course outline consists of five units: Introduction to Security, Securing Spaces, Securing Networks, Securing Devices, and Securing Applications and Data. Each unit features a variety of topics, spanning approximately 130 recommended class periods total based on a 45-minute class layout, covering 414 standards.
In Unit One, Introduction to Security, students are introduced to how adversaries compromise systems via social engineering, weak authentication, and public Wi-Fi risks, alongside how AI is used in both cyber attacks and cyber defense. Lessons include activities like investigating network logs to identify password attacks, interacting with AI tools using prompt injection techniques in the Gandalf challenge, writing original fictional cyber attack narratives, and working through interactive worksheets regarding human expert review in AI-assisted defense.
Unit Two focuses on Securing Spaces, which covers physical security. Over approximately 21 class periods, students study cyber foundations, physical vulnerabilities, and strategies for protecting and detecting physical attacks. They practice drafting fishing emails to understand psychological manipulation and complete the coffee shop consultant capstone project to conduct risk assessments and design layered defense-in-depth plans. The content uses interactive HTML notes to keep students engaged and test their understanding with formative questions. Projects in this course are structured either to build over multiple lessons or to be self-contained within their own dedicated lesson blocks.
Unit Three handles Securing Networks, spanning approximately 26 class periods. Students learn how defenders protect data in transit, analyze common network attacks like DNS poisoning or spoofing, configure wireless security, manage network segmentation, and place firewalls using access control lists. Interactive widgets allow students to fix misconfigured wireless access points and design segmented subnet networks for realistic school environments to contain potential damage.
Unit Four covers Securing Devices, including computers, mobile phones, and internet of things devices. Over 23 class periods, students explore device vulnerabilities, malware, password hashing, and anti-malware software settings. They take on the role of a junior security analyst in a high school data breach project to investigate failed login attempts, evaluate single-factor authentication, simulate patch management choices over a 30-day scenario, and execute guided authentication log analyses to distinguish brute force from credential stuffing.
Unit Five is our longest unit, spanning 30 class periods to cover Securing Applications and Data. Students explore file vulnerabilities, configure access controls on a Linux system using least privilege principles, and use symmetric and asymmetric cryptography. They get hands-on experience using browser-based RSA encryption simulations to manage public and private keys and run SHA-256 hash commands in command-line environments like bash or PowerShell to verify file integrity.
In addition to the curriculum, we are offering an expert-led online professional development cohort starting in July. This cohort includes five live sessions, asynchronous chat support, and student-level access to the range to help teachers stay ahead of their students, plan their first year, master core frameworks like the CIA triad, and prepare for the FRQ portion of the exam.
The fully integrated CodeHS Cyber Range allows students to launch capture the flag style challenges using real sandbox Linux virtual machines directly from their lessons, syncing rosters automatically and passing grades right back to the teacher gradebook. It features hints, solution guides, badges, a class leaderboard, an extra catalog of over 90 challenges for high-flyers, and an extensive command-line reference sheet. The AP Cyber Security course is officially live in the course catalog today for you to add to your classes and explore.
