Corporate VPN in Russia in 2025: Legal Status and What Businesses Need to Know

After Roskomnadzor blocked dozens of consumer VPN services, many executives are confused about whether VPNs are legal at all. The answer is unequivocal: corporate VPN is completely legal in Russia, and here is why.

What Roskomnadzor Actually Blocked

The restrictions apply exclusively to public consumer VPN services that allowed users to bypass website blocks. This is confirmed by official Roskomnadzor clarifications: the restrictions "do not apply to corporate information protection and encryption tools used by organisations to ensure the security of their own data."

A corporate VPN is a fundamentally different solution. It creates an encrypted communication channel between company employees and corporate infrastructure. Its purpose is data protection, not bypassing restrictions.

What Qualifies as a Corporate VPN

• ·Used to connect employees to company resources, not to access blocked websites
• ·Runs on servers owned or leased by the company, not a public platform
• ·Has dedicated infrastructure with managed access policies
• ·Uses FSTEK/FSB-certified encryption tools when working with state secrets or personal data

Why Businesses Need Corporate VPN in 2025

According to Positive Technologies, 45% of successful corporate network breaches in 2024–2025 began through compromised remote connections — through unprotected communication channels of employees working from home, on business trips, or abroad.

Corporate VPN solves multiple problems simultaneously: it encrypts all employee traffic regardless of which network they use, provides a single access control point for company resources, allows auditing all connections and quickly blocking compromised accounts.

VPN Gateway, ZTNA, or Something Else?

Classic VPN (IPsec, OpenVPN, WireGuard) remains a reliable solution for most companies. However, Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) architecture is gradually becoming the new standard: instead of granting full access to the corporate network, a user receives access only to the specific applications they need for work.