Splunk to exit Russian market amid growing government scrutiny

The timing of the announcement comes amid growing Russian government scrutiny of foreign companies, particularly security firms.

Security analytics provider Splunk no longer will do business in Russia, the company announced Monday in a blog post that may have created more questions than it answered.

“Splunk is continually evaluating where we are investing and focusing our company resources,” the San Francisco-based firm said. “As part of this ongoing evaluation, we have decided Splunk will no longer be selling software and services to organizations in Russia — either directly or through partners.”

The shift also includes ending opportunities with technical partners, resellers, distributors, and vendors, according to the announcement. Splunk intends to fulfill customer support obligations under existing contracts but will not expand or renew orders, it said.

Splunk did not include specific details about what led to its decision. The company did not immediately respond to a request for more information from CyberScoop.

The timing of the announcement comes amid growing Russian government scrutiny of foreign companies, particularly security firms. To reach Russia’s market, technology companies often must obtain a certification from the government, and source code review could be included as part of that process. Global companies including Symantec, McAfee and SAP have allowed Russian officials to review their products’ source code to search for any vulnerabilities, Reuters reported in January 2018.

U.S. officials, meanwhile, have asserted that the Moscow-based security vendor Kaspersky represents a threat to national security, an allegation Kaspersky has consistently refuted.

Splunk, valued at more than $2 billion, is known for a product that quickly gathers data from clients and raises suggestions about possible security issues based on that information. The company last year acquired analytics provider KryptonCloud, incident management service VictorOps and the automation tool Phantom.

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