The UK government has promised to spend nearly £2 billion over the next five years to try to tackle the growing problem of cyber attacks in the country.

Recent research suggested that Britain is particularly susceptible to data breaches involving compromised employee account data. Nonetheless, chancellor of the exchequer Philip Hammond claimed on Tuesday that the country is "an acknowledged global leader in cyber security."

Number 11's occupant crowed that the previous Tory-led coalition government had chucked £860 million at the problem, but Hammond then undermined himself somewhat by adding that "we must now keep up with the scale and pace of the threats we face." Which underlines the fact that the government is playing catch-up in its race against cybercrims.

The answer, according to the treasury, is to up taxpayer-funded spending in the fight against cyber attacks using money that was set aside by the government last year in its Strategic Defence and Security Review. The chancellor said:

Our new strategy, underpinned by £1.9 billion of support over five years and excellent partnerships with industry and academia, will allow us to take even greater steps to defend ourselves in cyberspace and to strike back when we are attacked.

If your toes aren't already curled enough, perhaps paymaster general Ben Gummer can help. He said: "No longer the stuff of spy thrillers and action movies, cyber-attacks are a reality and they are happening now. Our adversaries are varied—organised criminal groups, 'hactivists,' untrained teenagers, and foreign states."

Readers of these pages know that there is nothing new about baddies misbehaving on the Web. But since the TalkTalk hack attack in October 2015, such crimes have finally gone mainstream.

The treasury added that Whitehall's hefty investment would be three-pronged. It said a "world-class cyber workforce" would be developed, added that the UK would "use automated defences to safeguard citizens and businesses against growing cyber threats," and said that deterrent plans would be put in place propped up by better policing capabilities.

Number 11 said it would work closely with industry partners such as Bath-based Netcraft—an outfit that specialises in Internet security services and counts clients that include Microsoft, BT, Cisco, and Intel.

Hammond is also expected to announce plans to invest in the next generation of infosec experts with a new Cyber Security Research Institute, which we're told is a "virtual collection of UK universities" that will be tasked with beefing up smart phone, tablet, and laptop security "through research that could one day make passwords obsolete."

The GCHQ-backed National Cyber Security Centre opened its doors for the first time last month. By early 2017, the government has promised that the cyberhub will have a 700-strong team running the show.

However, the government's so-called National Cyber Security Strategy isn't entirely welcomed by industry. ISPs recently expressed concern about regulatory meddling, arguing that the focus should be on raising awareness, rather than burdening telcos with yet more rules.

As part of its cyber defence plan, Hammond's department said that the industry would be expected to adopt "a range of technical measures" including DNS filtering against malware and phishing sites, an e-mail verification system on government networks to try to prevent domain spoofing, and researching methods to move "safely beyond passwords." It hopes to also bring in a scheme to detect government network attacks.

The chancellor claimed that the government had already improved its efforts against "a website serving Web-inject malware." We're told that it previously "would stay active for over a month—now it is less than two days. UK-based phishing sites would remain active for a day—now it is less than an hour. And phishing sites impersonating government’s own departments would have stayed active for two days—now it is less than five hours."

NHS trusts have, for years, been particularly susceptible to such attacks. Indeed, the Northern Lincolnshire & Goole NHS Foundation Trust remains on red alert with appointments cancelled as it battles a virus that blighted its IT systems on Sunday.