The purpose of the publication is to assess the direction of development of socio-economic security in modern conditions and to consider ways of forming new approaches to its definition. Based on the analysis of the available literature on this issue, a comparative characteristic of approaches to the definition of socio-economic security, as well as its components, and the author's approach, considering the internal transformation of the phenomenon of socio-economic security towards the social block, as a concept of solving the existing problems of our time, is given.