AP® Cybersecurity

Course Essential Questions

• How do adversaries exploit human behavior, technology, and environments to compromise systems, and how can individuals effectively defend against these attacks?
• How can understanding vulnerabilities, threats, and risk in everyday physical and digital spaces help us make better security decisions?
• In what ways do security controls such as authentication, monitoring systems, and AI-driven tools, prevent, detect, and respond to cyber threats?
• Why is data valuable, how does its value influence risk, and what strategies can be used to protect it from unauthorized access or compromise?

Course Learning Objectives

• Analyze how social engineering, weak authentication, and public Wi-Fi attacks exploit user behavior and system vulnerabilities.
• Evaluate risks in physical and digital environments by identifying vulnerabilities, threats, and their potential impacts.
• Apply appropriate security controls like multi-factor authentication, network monitoring, and physical safeguards to reduce identified risks.
• Interpret log files and network data to detect indicators of compromise (IoCs) and identify potential cyberattacks.
• Explain how data value influences risk and justify the use of protection strategies such as cryptography and access controls.

Unit 1 Introduction to Cybersecurity

Week 1 Social Engineering and Software Setup

Week 2 Best Practices for Public Networks

Week 3 AI-Based Cybersecurity Attacks and Defense

Unit 2 Securing Spaces

Week 4 Cyber Foundations

Week 5 Risk Management and Defense-In-Depth

Week 6 Physical Vulnerabilities and Risk Assessment

Week 7 Protecting Physical Spaces

Week 8 Detecting Physical Attacks

Unit 3 Securing Networks

Week 9 Network Vulnerabilities and Attacks

Week 10 Managerial Controls and Wireless Security

Week 11 Network Segmentation

Week 12 Host-based Firewalls

Week 13 Network-based Firewalls

Week 14 Network Attack Detection

Week 15 Network Log File Analysis

Unit 4 Securing Devices

Week 16 Device Vulnerabilities

Week 17 Malware

Week 18 Authentication

Week 19 Protecting Devices

Week 20 Device Attack Detection

Week 21 Device Log File Analysis

Unit 5 Securing Applications and Data

Week 22 Application and Data Vulnerabilities and Attacks

Week 23 Managerial Controls

Week 24 Access Controls

Week 25 Symmetric Cryptography

Week 26 Asymmetric Cryptography

Week 27 Application Security and Input Sanitization (Collab Case Study 2)

Week 28 Application Attack Detection (Collab Case Study 2)

Week 29 Application Log File Analysis (Collab Case Study 2)

Week 30 Final Project (Collab Case Study 2)

Unit 6 AP Exam Review and Practice

Week 31 AP Practice Exam

Week 32 AP Practice Exam Analysis

Week 33 Goodbyes and Evaluations