The AP Cybersecurity elective will soon be available at Neshaminy High School (NHS) for the 2026-27 school year and is opening up new opportunities for students interested in the field.

Not only will this course dive into the protection needed in the digital world, it will also provide students with experience in methods to defend online threats.

Madison Dierolf, the future teacher for the course, provided a further description of what AP Cybersecurity will include.

“Throughout the course, [students] explore real types of attacks, how they work, and the tools used to stop or detect them—across physical spaces, computer networks, personal devices, and data.” 

Furthermore, Dierolf shared her enthusiasm for the addition of the class and the advantages of taking it.

“This course will benefit students because cybersecurity is a high-demand, high-growth field with well-paid, entry-level positions and more than 500,000 open jobs across the U.S.”

She continued to emphasize that “fewer than 4% of high school students have access to cybersecurity training in their school.”

With the addition of this course, NHS is providing more AP opportunities, and the option of exploring cybersecurity. 

Robert Wood, a teacher in the NHS Engineering Department explained, “you need to know how to protect yourself from things like [identity theft] and that’s where the whole cybersecurity realm comes into play.”

Similarly, Brett Burstein, who is the IT infrastructure manager at NHS and manages the network and server infrastructure while also leading the IT security program, provided his opinion.

“Twenty-five years ago, IT was mostly about keeping hardware and software up and running to support operations,” Burstein contrasted. “Future technology professionals will have to focus more on protecting organizations from external, and internal, threats in order to keep operations running smoothly.”

Students shared the excitement for the opportunities this course provides.

“To major in cybersecurity I think [the course is] important specifically in NHS so we can have more classes that kids can experiment with,” Chloe Xie, an NHS sophomore, shared. 

As the AP Cybersecurity class will only be available to 10th-12th graders, Dierolf recommends taking Cyber Forensics & Digital Law first because it will provide an introduction to the topics explored in AP Cybersecurity.

“I can’t wait to share that with students and hopefully encourage more students to consider going into the cybersecurity field,” Dierolf voiced.