Tumbleweed Email Firewall Doubles Spam Capture Rates for P&O Ports, Reduces Mail Server and Bandwidth Loads; Automated Spam Management Slashes IT Administration Time and Costs

Business Wire, Jan 19, 2005

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. -- Tumbleweed(R) Communications Corp. (Nasdaq:TMWD), the leading provider of email and file transfer security solutions, announced today that P&O Ports North America has deployed Tumbleweed Email Firewall with Dynamic Anti-spam Service (DAS) to filter and secure email communications throughout P&O Ports headquarters and remote offices. By combining anti-spam, virus scanning, and content filtering into one email management infrastructure, Tumbleweed's robust, policy-based framework empowers P&O Ports to protect their email network while dramatically reducing costs and administrative overhead.

With 400 geographically distributed users, P&O Ports is responsible for all port operations in North America, and averages up to 10,000 emails each day. Prior to implementing Tumbleweed Email Firewall, P&O Ports was capturing 800 to 1,000 spam messages a day. Using Tumbleweed Email Firewall's powerful heuristics and statistical analysis technology, P&O Ports was immediately able to double their spam capture rate, with almost no false positives. In addition to its 97% spam capture rate, Tumbleweed Email Firewall has caught 15,000 email-borne viruses within a two-month period.

"P&O Ports was looking for another layer of virus and spam prevention to protect our employees. After implementing Tumbleweed Email Firewall with DAS, our spam capture rate doubled with a very low false positive," said Chris Taylor, Corporate Network Administrator, for P&O Ports North America.

By blocking junk email, P&O Port's productivity and bandwidth immediately increased. Tumbleweed Email Firewall has enabled P&O Ports to shield its users from spam and free network resources from unwanted email.

"Previously P&O Ports had two layers of defense against viruses -- virus software on their Exchange server and desktop anti-virus software," said Joe Fisher, VP of Product Marketing for Tumbleweed Communications. "With Tumbleweed Email Firewall, P&O Ports detects and strips email-borne viruses before they ever reach the Exchange servers."

Benefits to P&O Ports:

--Doubled the spam capture rate based on earlier attempts, with almost no false positives

--First level of defense against email-borne viruses, reducing network traffic and impact on email servers

--Significantly increases end-user productivity by removing spam from their email boxes

--Excellent ROI from blocking incoming spam and email-borne viruses, and reducing mail server and bandwidth loads

--Automated spam management slashes IT management time

About Tumbleweed Email Firewall

Tumbleweed Email Firewall has been recognized as having the best email security product functionality by META Group, and was rated the #1 enterprise software solution for fighting spam, according to Network World (http://www.nwfusion.com/reviews/2003/0915spam.html). 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 more than 650 of the world's largest, most demanding messaging infrastructures, and is available in both appliance and software editions.

About Tumbleweed's Dynamic Anti-Spam Service

The Tumbleweed Dynamic Anti-Spam Service (DAS) is rated as a top anti-spam service for large enterprises by Network World magazine, and the product is currently used to block over 32 million spam messages per day on behalf of our customers. DAS is an Internet-based subscription service that updates Tumbleweed's Email Firewall and MailGate 2.2 Appliance with new defenses as they are published, similar to the way anti-virus engines work. Tumbleweed's Message Protection Lab 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. The Lab analyzes both spam and legitimate email gathered internationally and provided by enterprise customers, to ensure that the Dynamic Anti-Spam Service minimizes false positives in a business environment.

About P&O Ports North America

P&O Ports North America has over 400 employees, and is one of the largest terminal operators and stevedores in the United States. Based in Iselin, New Jersey, the company has operations in 22 ports on the U.S. Atlantic and Gulf Coasts and provides full service stevedoring and terminal operations and management in all cargo handling sectors. P&O Ports' parent company is a global leader in container terminal and stevedoring operations with logistics operations in eighty-four ports and twenty-four container terminals in seventeen countries throughout Europe, the United States, South America, Asia, Africa and Australia.

About Tumbleweed Communications Corp.

Tumbleweed provides security solutions for email protection, file transfers, and identity validation that allow organizations to safely conduct business over the Internet. Tumbleweed offers these solutions in three comprehensive product suites: MailGate, SecureTransport and Valicert Validation Authority. MailGate provides protection against spam, viruses and attacks, and enables policy-based message filtering, encryption and routing. SecureTransport enables business to safely exchange large files and transactions without proprietary software. Valicert Validation Authority is the world-leading solution for determining the validity of digital certificates. Tumbleweed's enterprise and government customers include 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, the US Department of Defense, and all four branches of the US Armed Forces. Tumbleweed was founded in 1993 and is headquartered in Redwood City, Calif. For additional information about Tumbleweed go to www.tumbleweed.com or call 650-216-2000.