North East Independent School District of Texas Lowers Spam Rates by 80% With the Tumbleweed Email Firewall

Business Wire, August 30, 2004

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. -- Integrated Email Firewall Solution Keeps District in Compliance With Email Content Regulations

Tumbleweed(R) Communications Corp. (Nasdaq:TMWD), a leading provider of secure Internet messaging software and hardware for enterprises and government agencies, announced today that the Northeast Independent School District of Texas has replaced their previous email hygiene solutions with the Tumbleweed Email Firewall(TM) to block viruses, inappropriate language, and improve spam capture rates by over 400%.

With 5,700 employee email boxes distributed throughout 56 schools and 4 administrative offices, the employees of the Northeast Independent School District of Texas receive as many as 18,000 email messages per day. Prior to installing Tumbleweed's Email Firewall and Dynamic Anti-Spam Service, 10,000 - 12,000 of the emails reaching staff in-boxes each day were spam. The District IT departments were inundated with complaints from employees who were receiving high levels of spam.

"We were looking for a one-box solution that would give us virus protection as well as sophisticated spam filtering," said David Caron, Unix Systems Administrator for the North East Independent School District of Texas. "In addition, as a public institution working with children, we needed a solution with content filtering that could ensure that our staff was in compliance with email content regulations. Evaluations proved that Tumbleweed's solution was the best for meeting all of those needs."

Tumbleweed's integrated email firewall solution combines anti-spam, virus scanning, and content filtering into one email management infrastructure, reducing cost, architectural complexity and risk, and administrative overhead. The email firewall captures over 60% of incoming email as spam with virtually no false positives, and has significantly reduced the school district's total cost of ownership (TCO). Tumbleweed's content filtering helps the taxpayer-funded district comply with the legal standards governing the types of content that may be present in employees' email.

"As school districts and educational institutions rely more and more upon for the Internet for communicating both internally and with the community, they face the same email challenges that corporations have been struggling with," said Jeff Ready, VP of Marketing for Tumbleweed Communications. "Organizations like North East Independent School District of Texas are discovering that Tumbleweed can keep them in compliance with communication regulations while simultaneously providing first-rate protection from spam and viruses."

About Tumbleweed's Email Firewall:

Tumbleweed Email Firewall has been recognized as the #1 enterprise software solution for fighting spam according to Network World (http://www.nwfusion.com/reviews/2003/0915spam.html), and the #1 email firewall software for large enterprises by Information Security Magazine. Tumbleweed Email Firewall protects, filters and secures email traffic at the Internet gateway with an integrated set of anti-spam, anti-virus, anti-hacker, content filtering, email relay, and encrypted messaging capabilities -- minimizing email communications risks and reducing email management costs. Tumbleweed Email Firewall is used by over 400 of the largest, most demanding messaging infrastructures in the world, and is available in both appliance and software editions.

Tumbleweed's Dynamic Anti-spam Service(TM) (DAS) is an Internet-based subscription service that updates the Tumbleweed email firewall with new heuristic defenses as they are published, similar to the way anti-virus engines work. Tumbleweed's Message Protection Lab(TM) develops and publishes the heuristic updates: the Lab is staffed by experts who continually analyze spam to identify new spammer trends and tactics, and create and publish new heuristics to stop them.

About Tumbleweed Communications:

Tumbleweed is a leading provider of secure Internet messaging software and hardware for enterprises and government agencies. By making Internet communications secure, reliable and automated, Tumbleweed's anti-spam email firewall, secure file transfer, secure email, and identity validation solutions help customers significantly reduce the cost of doing business. Tumbleweed products are used to communicate with millions of end-users and tens of thousands of corporations. Tumbleweed has more than 600 enterprise customers, including ABN Amro, Bank of America Securities, Catholic Healthcare West, JP Morgan Chase & Co., The Regence Group (Blue Cross/Blue Shield), St. Luke's Episcopal Healthcare System, the US Food and Drug Administration, and the US Navy and Marine Corps. Tumbleweed Communications was founded in 1993 and is headquartered in Redwood City, California. For additional information about Tumbleweed go to www.tumbleweed.com or call 650-216-2000.

Safe Harbor Statement

Tumbleweed cautions that forward-looking statements contained in this press release are based on current plans and expectations, and that a number of factors could cause the actual results to differ materially from the guidance given at this time. These factors are described in the Safe Harbor statement below.