Government purchases of solutions in the field of secure communication channels have recovered after the market contraction in the first quarter. The number of procedures in annual terms increased, and their total volume in money decreased by 9.6%, to 10.3 billion rubles. Market participants attribute the recovery to budget cycles, and the main challenge of the second half of the year is the possible transition to new cryptographic standards.
At the end of five months of 2026, the volume of government procurement of corporate VPNs and secure communication channels returned to the level of the same period last year after the disastrous first quarter. According to the tender management system “Tenderplan” (purchases under 44-FZ and 223-FZ), in January-May 2026, 2.08 thousand procedures were carried out for a total amount of 10.3 billion rubles. A year earlier for the same period – 1.9 thousand purchases for 11.4 billion rubles.
Thus, the number of purchases increased by 5%, and their total cost decreased by 9.6%. The average contract price remained at the level of 5.6–5.7 million rubles.
These data contrast with the first quarter. Then, according to SKB Kontur estimates, the total amount of contracts fell from 6.9 billion to 2.02 billion rubles, despite the increase in the number of government purchases of corporate VPNs by 22.6% year-on-year, Vedomosti wrote. Experts explained this by the fact that in 2025, VPN solutions were often part of large infrastructure contracts, and in 2026 they began to be allocated as separate purchases. However, following the results of five months, the market actually recovered to last year’s volumes, which does not indicate a drop in demand, but a smoothing out of quarterly fluctuations.
The main dynamics this year are provided by purchases under 223-FZ (commercial organizations with state participation). Over the five months of 2026, their volume increased as a share of the total to 12% versus 9% for the same period last year. At the same time, the number of regular suppliers in the VPN market decreased from 167 to 144, and the average number of participants per lot remained at 1.1, that is, the market is not becoming more competitive, despite the increase in the number of procedures.
The reason for the drop in performance in the first quarter was not a decrease in demand, but the later introduction of budget limits and tightening of requirements for the register of Russian software, which forced customers to shift competitions to April-May, says Daniil Levchenko, architect of the Reksoft information security department. The head of the Security Code product promotion department, Pavel Korostelev, in turn, points to the general budget deficit among government customers at the beginning of the year, which was compensated in the second quarter “due to the receipt of additional funds into the budget.” Information security expert at Kontur.Aegids and Staffcop Yuri Drachenin adds that some large customers have already completed basic projects to build secure infrastructure, so the market is developing unevenly, and periods of active procurement are replaced by temporary lulls.
At the same time, experts agree that state-owned companies operating under Federal Law 223 are becoming the key market driver.
The increase in purchases under this Federal Law indicates the high activity of natural monopolies and large corporate customers, for whom the development of secure infrastructure remains a priority against the backdrop of an increase in the number of cyber attacks and the risks of compromise of supply chains, says Yuri Drachenin. The VPN market in the field of government procurement is quite mature, reminds Pavel Korostelev, while admitting that potential growth may be due to rising prices for cryptographic equipment.
The main challenge for the industry in the second half of the year, according to Daniil Levchenko, will be a change in cryptographic standards. The FSB is preparing regulatory requirements for the mandatory transition to post-quantum algorithms and is tightening hardware requirements, effectively banning imported crypto cores, which will require a massive replacement of gateways. The indicators will also be influenced by the fact that “in the next two to three years, the state VPN market will finally cease to exist as a segment of independent services,” adds Igor Bederov, Chairman of the Council for Combating Technological Offenses of the Constitutional Court of the National Security Service of Russia.
