Tumbleweed Introduces Industry's First Enterprise-Class Content Filtering & Secure Messaging Appliance

Business Wire, Jan 27, 2003

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

REDWOOD CITY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 27, 2003

Tumbleweed MMS(TM) -- Appliance Edition Offers Greatest Scalability and Most Comprehensive Feature Set with Easy Installation

and Low Cost of Ownership

Tumbleweed(R) Communications Corp. (Nasdaq:TMWD), a leading provider of secure messaging applications for businesses and government agencies using the Internet, today announced the introduction of Tumbleweed MMS(TM) -- Appliance Edition, a turnkey content filtering, secure messaging and policy management solution.

The pre-configured bundle of hardware and software enables an organization to easily and intelligently filter, route and protect all corporate messaging traffic from a centralized management console. The appliance delivers the industry's fastest "time to protection" by significantly easing the procurement and installation challenges associated with deploying an enterprise-class spam blocking, content filtering, secure messaging and anti-virus platform. The completely integrated solution also greatly reduces ongoing maintenance requirements, contributing to a much lower TCO (total cost of ownership)

"The task of managing threats to e-mail infrastructures grows in complexity everyday," said Matt Cain, Senior Vice President, Web & Collaboration Strategies, and lead e-mail analyst at META Group. "Organizations should look closely at e-mail hygiene vendors that bundle together multiple management services, to increase efficiencies and drive down operational costs. We believe e-mail hygiene services coupled with network appliances can also increase the overall security of e-mail systems." Tumbleweed's best-in-class content filtering application -- Tumbleweed MMS 5.5 -- serves as the backbone of the new appliance, with a hardened Windows 2000 operating system, SQL Server 2000 database and a rack-mounted, dual-Pentium processor server included to round out the solution. Battle tested at hundreds of blue-chip organizations, MMS offers proven enterprise-class scalability, flexibility and extensibility.

Specific appliance functionality includes:

-- Anti-spam -- The appliance comes with a pre-defined set of spam detection and blocking policies, as well as an anti-spam lexicon, incorporating real-world input from Tumbleweed's blue-chip customer base. It offers IT managers the ability to easily customize company-specific spam policies, and provides the industry's widest array of options for handling suspected spam messages, ensuring valid messages are not lost. This approach has enabled many of Tumbleweed's enterprise customers to block up to 90% of unsolicited e-mail with very low false-positive rates.

-- Content Scanning and inspection -- Gives an organization the ability filter all inbound and outbound e-mail and attachments to ensure protection of sensitive customer information, intellectual property and corporate policy compliance.

-- E-mail encryption -- Enables the secure delivery of sensitive e-mail based on identity of sender, recipient or message content. All corporate e-mail is scanned at the gateway and levels of security are applied based on company-developed secure messaging policies. When combined with Tumbleweed's IME secure delivery server, the integrated solution offers a host of additional options for securing and tracking electronic communications with customers and partners.

-- Anti-virus -- MMS -- Appliance Edition fully protects an organization's messaging system by detecting, cleaning and/or quarantining any e-mail borne viruses. Automatic virus pattern updates ensure protection from the latest viral threats.

-- Web-based administration console -- IT administrators can securely configure and edit messaging policies, as well as take numerous other specific actions from anywhere in the world, via the appliance's browser-based management console.

"The new Tumbleweed MMS -- Appliance Edition combines the full version of our MMS 5.5 application with the necessary third party components to provide a complete solution," said Jeff Smith, Co-Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Tumbleweed Communications. "This enables us to retain the power and flexibility large organizations demand while streamlining the process of deploying in a production environment."

About Tumbleweed Communications Corp.

Tumbleweed is a leading provider of secure messaging applications for businesses and government organizations using the Internet. Tumbleweed's robust policy-based framework empowers organizations to safely share and protect critical information, increase customer loyalty and privacy and dramatically reduce costs. Tumbleweed is trusted by hundreds of blue-chip customers including American Express, Amgen Inc., Bank of America Securities, Catholic Healthcare West, ChevronTexaco Corp., Dell Computer Corporation, Oppenheimer Funds, Inc., The Regence Group (Blue Cross/Blue Shield), TD Waterhouse Investor Services, Inc., the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and the U.S. Navy. One hundred of the Fortune 500 are Tumbleweed customers. Tumbleweed Communications was founded in 1993 and is headquartered in Redwood City, California.