The article suggests the study of the evolution of ideas about the concept of national security in domestic and foreign science. In the USSR, the concept of national security was an indirect analog of the notion of national security, which had a narrower content. The modern application of the concept of national security goes beyond the traditional notions of ensuring the security of the state, including the security of the people as a whole. It is revealed that the content of the notion of national security is expanding in modern science. Modern Russian regulatory legal acts on national security issues correspond to the modern scientific understanding of this concept.
