The author argues that the theory of national economic security is on the rise again and the qualitatively new phase of its development will be characterized by an increase of scientific and applied interest to various aspects of this field. This trend is consistent with the escalation of internal and external threats to socio-economic stability in major countries, the growing turbulence in the global economy, intensified global competition for natural resources and human capital and the emergence of new types of threats to national economic security, including environmental crises, uncontrolled migration and the coronavirus pandemic. In the near future, the scientific community will face a number of important research tasks, including the need to shape an updated methodological base, verify acquired knowledge and outline new research priorities. These tasks will be difficult to complete without a set of comprehensive definitions in the field of national economic security. The ongoing capsulation of scientific schools and their gravitation toward their own conceptual frameworks is a serious problem for the institutionalization and development of national economic security as an independent scientific discipline. This problem makes it impossible to create a common methodological framework for the discipline and undermines constructive scientific discussion between representatives of different scientific schools in this field. The author attempts to streamline the conceptual apparatus to solve the aforementioned problem. The scholarship of several scientific schools and prominent experts is analyzed to identify and systematize the most important terms and their definitions within the field of national economic security. Based on the data obtained a number of comprehensive and coherent definitions is introduced. The current stage of the evolution of national economic security is characterized by a weakening of neoliberal ideas and an increased impact of economic concepts within neorealism in the scientific community. These developments need to be reflected in the conceptual apparatus of this discipline. In this regard, the system of current basic definitions requires a significant update.