3Com and TippingPoint Receive Frost & Sullivan 2005 Award for Technology Leadership in Voice over IP Security; Company's Leadership Recognized for its VoIP Security Protection and Formation of VOIP Security Alliance

Business Wire, August 30, 2005

MALBOROUGH, Mass. -- 3Com and its TippingPoint division, the leader in intrusion prevention, today announced that Frost & Sullivan, a leading industry research firm, has named the company winner of the 2005 Award for Technology Leadership. The award was presented to 3Com and TippingPoint for its role in forming and chairing the Voice over IP Security Alliance (VOIPSA), www.voipsa.org, as well as for its effective Voice over IP (VoIP) security capabilities in the TippingPoint(TM) Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS).

"TippingPoint pioneered the market for VoIP security, and found that standards and cooperation were important to allow this industry to expand," said Shirley Hunt, Research Analyst at Frost & Sullivan. "We expect 3Com to continue to lead and grow the industry it helped create, and play a strategic role as time progresses."

In June 2004, TippingPoint announced its Intrusion Prevention Systems provided security and bandwidth protection for VoIP, making it one of the first true VoIP security products. The TippingPoint IPS is capable of protecting the underlying threats in the data network: worms, viruses, Trojans, and Denial of Service threats. It also protects against VoIP-specific threats, including vulnerabilities in VoIP protocol implementations. TippingPoint's bandwidth management capabilities can prioritize traffic and throttle traffic associated with non-critical applications like peer-to-peer file sharing.

3Com, together with its TippingPoint division, formed the Voice over IP Security Alliance in February 2005 in order to find and mitigate VoIP security risks through research, education and testing. The VoIP Security Alliance (VOIPSA) is the first and only group solely and holistically dedicated to VoIP security research and education backed by a wide spectrum of organizations represented by universities, security researchers, VoIP vendors, thought leaders and VoIP providers. The mission of VOIPSA is to improve the public awareness of issues and best practices for security and privacy of VoIP.

"VOIPSA members have found and resolved many security issues together, proving that industry cooperation is possible," added Hunt. "3Com and its TippingPoint division work with other members to create an environment for testing new products against security threats to determine interoperability issues, effectiveness of security defense, and techniques for patching security holes."

The Frost & Sullivan Award for Technology Leadership is bestowed each year upon the company that has demonstrated excellence in technology leadership within their industry. 3Com and its TippingPoint division have demonstrated technology leadership by excelling in all stages of the technology life cycle--incubation, adaptation, take-up and maturity--to ensure a continuous flow of improvements. By innovating leading-edge concepts the company has pioneered client applications.

To choose the recipient of this award, the analyst team tracks all emerging technologies, ongoing research and development projects within the industry. This process includes interviews with all the market participants and extensive secondary and technology research. The technologies and research projects are then compared according to customer base demands. Also considered are elements such as feasibility of product launch, likelihood of customer acceptance and acceptance rates, and estimated time to market. Competitors are then compared and ranked for relative position.

In addition to the methodology described above, there are specific criteria used in determining the final ranking of competitors in this industry. The recipient of this award has excelled based on one or more of the following criteria:

--Significance of the technology in the industry

--Number of competitors having similar industry technology (competitive factor)

--The technology refinement process meets changing end-user needs (addresses research and development efforts by vendors)

--Value-added technology and services to the customers

--Adoption rate by each of the industry participants (denotes responsiveness of the vendors)

--New product innovation

--Time to market

About TippingPoint, a division of 3Com

TippingPoint, a division of 3Com, is the leading provider of network-based intrusion prevention systems. The TippingPoint IPS is the most decorated in its industry. For a full list of awards, visit http://www.tippingpoint.com/products_certifications.html. Our innovative approach offers customers unmatched network-based security with unrivaled economics, ultra-high performance, scalability and reliability. TippingPoint is based in Austin, Texas, and can be contacted through its Web site at www.tippingpoint.com or by telephone at 1-888-TRUE-IPS.

About 3Com Corporation

3Com Corporation (NASDAQ: COMS) is a leading provider of secure, converged voice and data networking solutions for enterprises of all sizes. 3Com offers a broad line of innovative products backed by world class sales, service and support, which excel at delivering business value for its customers. Through its TippingPoint division, 3Com 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. For further information, please visit www.3com.com, or the press site www.3com.com/pressbox.>