Cyber attacks have ranked as one of the country's top risks to national security for seven years, but the government has been sluggish to respond to the threat by taking too long to knit together its "alphabet soup" of agencies tackling the problem, MPs have warned.

The public accounts committee (PAC) said that the cabinet office—which has been tasked with protecting information across Britain—is doing a poor job of working with the wider public sector, and is "undermined by inconsistent and chaotic processes for recording personal data breaches." It said:

There is little oversight of the costs and performance of government information assurance projects, and processes for recording departmental personal data breaches are inconsistent and dysfunctional. Poor reporting of low level breaches, such as letters containing personal details being addressed to the wrong person, reduces our confidence in the cabinet office’s ability to protect the nation from higher threat cyber attacks.

It added that there was "too little emphasis on informing and supporting the public sector, delivery partners, and individual users of government websites, particularly on what to do if a data breach incident occurs," and recommended that the cabinet office should consult the Information Commissioner's Office to "establish best practices."

The MPs also warned that the government faced a "real struggle" with finding enough civil servants who have decent infosec skills, and asked for a progress report six months from now so that the cabinet office can show what steps it is taking to improve Whitehall's capability on tooling up the right people for the job.

The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), which is part of GCHQ, only opened its doors to the public late last year. It bills itself as a "a bridge between industry and government, providing a unified source of advice, guidance, and support on cyber security, including the management of cyber security incidents." But the PAC panel says it's unclear who the NCSC supports, and has called on Whitehall to "develop a detailed plan" by the end of this financial year.

"Government has a vital role to play in cyber security across society but it needs to raise its game. Its approach to handling personal data breaches has been chaotic and does not inspire confidence in its ability to take swift, coordinated, and effective action in the face of higher-threat attacks," said PAC chair Meg Hillier.

The cabinet office dismissed the committee's concerns, however, by claiming that the "government has acted with pace and ambition" and pointed—yet again—to the £1.9 billion of taxpayer money that it has earmarked for its "national cyber security strategy."

While the NCSC said the government had already made it clear that the newly-formed agency was the "UK’s definitive authority on cyber security." It added: "In the four months since becoming operational, the NCSC has transformed how the UK deals with cyber security by offering incident management capabilities, fostering technical innovation to help prevent attacks, and providing real-time cyber threat information to 3,000 organisations from over 20 different industries."

In a speech on Thursday night, defence secretary Michael Fallon warned—in light of Russia's recent manoeuvres—of "cyber weaponry to disrupt critical infrastructure and disable democratic machinery." He said that Moscow was targeting the West and NATO with a sustained series of cyber attacks.

"Today we see a country that in weaponising misinformation has created what we might now see as the post-truth age," said Fallon.