TippingPoint Launches Major European Expansion as Surveys Warn of IT Security Vulnerability

Business Wire, May 24, 2004

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

AUSTIN, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 24, 2004

TippingPoint Technologies, Inc. (Nasdaq:TPTI), the leader in intrusion prevention, is launching a major pan-European expansion this year in response to customer demands amid a global focus on improving IT security. Recent surveys rate security as the number one priority in IT spending, and indicate Europe's increasing vulnerability to misuse and abuse of data networks and the business applications that operate on them. TippingPoint opened its first European office in Amsterdam in the last five months and opened offices in Stuttgart, Germany last month. The UK and the Nordic region are next in line with offices opening this month.

A recent IDC forecast indicated worldwide spending on security and ensuring business continuity would grow twice as fast as IT spending, reaching $116 billion by 2007. Furthermore, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers' Information Security Breaches Survey 2004, more than two thirds of UK companies have suffered a malicious attack in the past year.

"Increasingly, businesses are dependent on interconnected data networks. European service providers and enterprises understand that the health of the business is predicated on the health of those networks," says TippingPoint's Chief Executive Officer Kip McClanahan. "TippingPoint's focus on keeping networks secure and healthy despite more frequent and sophisticated malicious attacks makes our decision to expand into the European market a timely one."

TippingPoint's award-winning UnityOne Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) product line protects networks ranging from the multi-gigabit core networks of the largest businesses to small/medium businesses and remote branch offices. TippingPoint's IPS, coupled with TippingPoint's best-of-breed security and policy management tools, enables end-to-end protection of the entire business and helps to ensure business continuity in the face of increasing network and application misuse and abuse.

"The Intrusion Prevention market is growing rapidly across EMEA," said Paul Couturier, TippingPoint's vice president of International Operations, who is spearheading the expansion of a premium Value-Added Distribution network across Europe to deliver the level of support expected by resellers of sophisticated security systems. "The demand is driven by recent press and customer awareness of Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) being costly and difficult to deploy. IPS is the way forward. The value proposition from TippingPoint is outstanding, and end users love our networking-based technology, low latency and ease of deployment via central management. Our next step is to open a sales office in London for the UK and Nordic region in May with rapid expansion planned across the wider European marketplace."

UnityOne represents a major leap forward in intrusion prevention. In a recent multi-vendor IPS evaluation performed by The NSS Group, UnityOne was rated best overall and granted the coveted NSS Gold Award -- the first ever for intrusion prevention. The NSS Group report stated, "TippingPoint was one of the best at providing a 'comfort factor' for those worried about deploying an in-line device in the shape of 'Recommended Settings.' Most users would choose those from day one and might never alter them."

TippingPoint's UnityOne Intrusion Prevention Systems provide Application Protection, Performance Protection and Infrastructure Protection at gigabit speeds through total packet inspection. Application Protection capabilities provide fast, accurate, reliable protection from internal and external cyber attacks. Through its Infrastructure Protection capabilities, UnityOne protects routers, switches, DNS and other critical infrastructure from targeted attacks and traffic anomalies. UnityOne Performance Protection capabilities enable customers to throttle non-mission critical applications that hijack valuable bandwidth and IT resources, thereby aligning network resources and business-critical application performance.

About TippingPoint Technologies:

TippingPoint is the leading provider of network-based intrusion prevention systems that deliver in-depth Application Protection, Infrastructure Protection, and Performance Protection for corporate enterprises, government agencies, service providers and academic institutions. Our innovative approach offers customers unmatched network-based security with unrivaled economics, ultra-high performance, scalability and reliability. TippingPoint's corporate headquarters is based in Austin, Texas, and can be contacted through its Web site at www.tippingpoint.com or by telephone at 1-888-648-9663. TippingPoint's European headquarters is based in Amsterdam tel: 31 (0) 20 561 6222.

TippingPoint, the TippingPoint logo, UnityOne, the UnityOne logo and Digital Vaccine are registered trademarks of TippingPoint.

TippingPoint Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains various forward-looking statements and information that are based on TippingPoint's belief, as well as assumptions made by and information currently available to TippingPoint. When used in this press release, words such as "anticipate," "project," "expect," "plan," "goal," "forecast," "intend," "could," "believe," "may," and similar expressions and statements regarding TippingPoint's plans and objectives for future operations, are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Although TippingPoint believes that such expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, TippingPoint cannot give assurances that such expectations will prove to be correct. These forward-looking statements are subject to certain risks, uncertainties and assumptions. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those anticipated, estimated or projected. Among the key factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations, estimates of costs or projected or anticipated results are: changes in suppliers' prices, changes in consumers' demand, adverse developments affecting our business, inaccuracies in certain of our estimates, changes to cost estimates, changes in economic or industry conditions and changes in regulatory requirements. These and other risks and assumptions are described in TippingPoint's reports that are available from the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. TippingPoint has no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.