Growth for Nigeria’s information technology (IT) security industry is at 39%, says a top official from Trend Micro.

Ihab Moawad -- vice president for the Mediterranean, Middle East and Africa at IT security firm Trend Micro -- has disclosed this number ahead of his company launching an official Nigerian office and appointing a distributor in the country.

“The growth in IT security within the Nigerian region is sitting at a staggering 39%, which is further fuelled by the amount of business reform and the call for compliance from government and the financial sector on businesses within the country,” says Moawad in a statement.

“These factors are creating a growing appetite amongst businesses for robust security solutions that extend from the mobile device, through the network and into the cloud – all areas of which Trend Micro has a market leading solution for,” he says.

Subsequently, Trend Micro says in a statement that it has appointed Redington Gulf as its first official distributor in Nigeria.

“As a channel driven business, the company’s strategy is to grow and invest in local partners on the ground, while at the same time working through its distributors in the region,” says Trend Micro in its statement.

Trend Micro has suggested that it plans targeting Nigeria’s banking, financial services and government sectors with the security company’s ‘Deep Discovery and Deep Security’.

Cases of bank e-fraud in Nigeria was valued at N7.5 billion in the first quarter of 2014, according to the Nigerian Inter-bank Settlements Systems (NIBSS) company.

Other sectors that Trend Micro plans targeting include telecoms. Trend Micro plans selling its enterprise ‘bring your own device’ (BYOD) solutions to telecom operators in the country.

But plans are in place for a wider African roll-out.

“The next step for us after establishing our presence in Nigeria will be to look at expanding into Kenya in 2015, which we see as the Africa year for Trend Micro. This will complete our initial African goal of having a presence in North, East, South and West Africa,” notes Moawad.