In 2024, government agencies' spending on VPN technologies surged, reaching 14.1 billion rubles in the first nine months, representing a 683% increase compared to the same period last year. The majority of these expenses were attributed to the Moscow Department of Information Technology, which signed contracts worth 9.8 billion rubles, covering services from 2024 to 2026. Suppliers included companies such as "Akado Telecom", "Sitronics", and "Rostelecom".
Experts attribute the sharp increase in demand for VPN among government agencies to the growing number of DDoS attacks, as well as the need for enhanced protection of confidential traffic. VPN allows for the unification of remote devices into a private network, encrypting traffic and protecting it from interception. The technology is used to create secure communication channels between various government departments and their branches.
Among other VPN service clients, the Social Fund and the Federal Customs Service (FCS) stand out, whose contracts for 1.6 billion rubles were also fulfilled by "Rostelecom". Experts also note a significant increase in the use of SD-WAN, technologies that, in addition to traffic encryption, can manage its routing. In particular, such solutions help improve the security of working with confidential data, which is becoming increasingly important in the face of increasing cyberattacks and data theft attempts.
Overall, experts note that the demand for VPN among government agencies is unlikely to decline in the near future, given the increased security requirements and growing cyberattack threats.
Read more on this topic:
Attacking IT providers: specialists discover dangerous botnet
