Chloe Smith, minister for political and constitutional reform at the Cabinet Office, has said the government's £650m spend on cyber security "underlines the importance" the government places on the UK's safety.
Describing the economic climate surrounding the investment - which has often been criticised as too low by commentators - as "one of the tightest fiscal environments we have ever seen", Smith's opening keynote at the Information Security conference in London extolled the virtues of the spend.
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Smith spoke of how the UK cyber security industry sustains 26,000 jobs, and how its sales amount to £3.8bn.
"We've made the UK one of the most secure places to do business in the world," said Smith.
"We want to make the UK more resilient, and shape an open and vibrant cyberspace, and we want to build the UK's cyber security knowledge, skills and capability."
But Smith admitted there were still factors "stopping the sector from growing, with a particular emphasis on SMBs and boosting their market potential."
The government-organised Cyber Growth Partnership, which represents 850 large and small organisations and met for the first time last month has already, said Smith, found "agreement in ways to move forward".
"The ideas we discussed are based on what we can and have to do in future," said Smith, who described the setting up of specialist academic training centres at UK universities - some costing up to £500,000 a year to maintain - as "taking steps to improve the skills, and widen the pipeline of talent".
Smith admitted that such skills will "take some time to filter through, but we're putting in place the right processes now to make the right number of skilled people when we need them."
Smith put much of the responsibility for the future of cyber security development at the door of UK businesses:
"We have to work with you to help this growing sector to thrive. We have to work with industry to build meaningful partnerships, to ensure UK businesses capitalise on this growing demand. That is for the benefit of Britain as a whole."
