The paper aims to assess the effectiveness of the impact of customs and tariff regulation on individual indicators of economic security. The research is based on a comprehensive and systemic analysis and general scientific methods of knowledge—analysis, synthesis, dialectical method, systematization, classification, process and systemic approaches, and the method of comparison. The authors assess the state of Russia’s economic security in the benchmark years 2015 and 2019. It is shown that despite the positive dynamics of the value of many indicators, some of them, including those related to foreign economic activity, are outside the threshold values. The authors conducted a comparative-chronological analysis of the dynamics of foreign trade in certain categories of goods and changes in measures of customs and tariff regulation applied to them: import and export duties and changes in the classification and coding of goods, which increase the differentiation of the establishment of duty rates for similar goods. Economic security indicators affected by these changes are identified. The article was independently written by a team of authors. The theoretical basis of the research is based on the scientific works of Russian and foreign scientists. The statistical base of the research is represented by the official publications of the executive authorities. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023.