As part of the College Board’s AP Career Kickstart initiative to tailor new courses to specific career and technical education programs, the cybersecurity course was piloted in the 2025-26 school year with 3,100 students in 183 schools across 30 states, according to a blog post today on Cisco’s website. Now, the College Board is hoping to offer it in 800 schools.
Jennifer Mulhern, vice president of AP Program Access, said much of the course content will remain consistent with the pilot year. Students will continue to receive a broad introduction to cybersecurity, including securing networks, devices and data, detecting attacks and responding to threats.
New to this year is a partnership with Cisco, which will provide instructional resources, labs and lesson plans that align with its own entry-level cybersecurity certification. This will give AP Cybersecurity students the option to earn either college credit by taking the AP test, or a workforce credential by taking the Cisco Certified Support Technician exam.
“In modern education today … you want to create a lot of accessibility, you want to create a multitude of entry points, but you also want a journey of quests of different areas where you can validate your skills,” said Ryan Rose, Cisco’s director of product management for skills and certifications. “You want things that open more doors for you, not close them.”
Mulhern said teacher preparation is central to the expansion, especially because cybersecurity courses remain uncommon in high schools. Around 4 percent of U.S. high schoolers had access to cybersecurity education in 2025, according to ed-tech analyst Phil Hill.
Meanwhile, the demand for cybersecurity talent is growing. According to workforce research from CyberSeek, more than 500,000 cybersecurity jobs were listed in 2024-25, representing a 12 percent increase over the same period the previous year.
Mulhern said the College Board is building cybersecurity training into its AP Summer Institutes, optional 30-hour teacher training events held in the summer.
“We’re starting to build out not just that summer training, but the through-year training experience, because one of the things that we are going to need to address to really grow the course is having many more teachers who are able to teach it,” she said. “That means that we’re going to have to work with existing and interested computer science teachers, math teachers, science teachers.”
Rose said Cisco’s role is helping teachers connect cybersecurity concepts to practical, industry-aligned skills. Training materials offered through Cisco Networking Academy will cover terminology and best practices — for example, explaining what a “red team” and a “blue team” means.
Mulhern said industry partners are playing a larger role in AP course development, helping inform course development.
“We are working, for these courses, both with higher-education faculty, our K-12 educators, as well as industry partners, in both defining the course framework, which outlines the essential knowledge and skills that will appear on an AP exam, as well as having industry partners help inform that exam design,” she said. “That is new for AP, to have a new stakeholder at the table.”
