SkillSoft Selects Tumbleweed Email Firewall to Secure Email and Fight

    Business Editors/High-Tech Editors

    REDWOOD CITY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 1, 2005--Tumbleweed(R) Communications Corp. (Nasdaq:TMWD), a leading provider of mission-critical Internet communications software for enterprises, financial services organizations and government, announced today that SkillSoft PLC (Nasdaq: SKIL), a leading provider of enterprise e-learning, has chosen Tumbleweed Email Firewall with Dynamic Anti-spam Service (DAS) to protect 1,500 users in eight offices from spam and email-borne viruses.
    SkillSoft is a leading provider of comprehensive e-learning content and technology products for business and IT professionals within the Global 2000. Prior to implementing Tumbleweed's products, SkillSoft was using an anti-spam product that could only filter based on keyword. They found the previous solution inadequate and users were constantly complaining about the flood of spam. The product offered no flexibility or control, which was a high priority to SkillSoft's administrators.
    "We needed to protect our employees from inbound email that may contain spam and viruses," said Ted Duran, Manager of IT, North America for Skillsoft. "Tumbleweed's Email Firewall with Dynamic Anti-spam Service allows us the necessary flexibility to protect, manage and monitor our email environment."
    SkillSoft researched and evaluated several anti-spam products and chose Tumbleweed Email Firewall to protect against email borne spam and viruses, and provide high levels of flexibility, customization, reporting and monitoring. Out of an average of 50,000 emails per day, 16,000 of the messages reaching SkillSoft employees were spam, or 40%, with almost no false positives.
    "Protecting against inbound email threats is critical for firms like SkillSoft," said John Thielens, CTO for Tumbleweed Communications. "Tumbleweed Email Firewall with Dynamic Anti-spam Service provides firms like SkillSoft with the tools, flexibility and reporting capabilities necessary for them to successfully manage their email environment."
    SkillSoft's IT administrators value Tumbleweed Email Firewall's flexible monitoring, control, and reporting capabilities in support of their email management. Tumbleweed Email Firewall's robust policy management allows IT administrators to easily deploy a single protection policy across an unlimited number of distributed relays and policy engines. Email Firewall also allows in-depth reporting and monitoring on email trends, spam volumes, and policy violations; and audit trails track all message processing steps and actions taken by the relay and policy engine as well as administrator-initiated configuration changes.

    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 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 SkillSoft

    SkillSoft is a leading provider of comprehensive e-learning content and technology products for business and IT professionals within the Global 2000. SkillSoft's multi-modal learning solutions support and enhance the speed and effectiveness of both formal and informal learning processes and integrate SkillSoft's in-depth courseware, learning management platform technology and support services.
    Content offerings include SkillSoft's Business Skills Library and IT Skills and Certification Library; ITPro, BusinessPro, FinancePro, and OfficeEssentials Referenceware(R) collections by Books24x7; and health and safety compliance courseware by GoTrain.

    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.

    SAFE HARBOR STATEMENT

    Tumbleweed cautions that forward-looking statements contained in this press release are based on plans and expectations as of the date of the press release, 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.

    Except for the historical information contained herein, the matters discussed in this press release may constitute forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected, particularly with respect to the features and performance of Tumbleweed's Email Firewall and Dynamic Anti-spam Service. In some cases, forward-looking statements can be identified by terminology such as "may," "will," "should," "potential," "continue," "expects," "anticipates," "intends," "plans," "believes," "estimates," and similar expressions. For further cautions about the risks of investing in Tumbleweed, we refer you to the documents Tumbleweed files from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission, particularly Tumbleweed's Form 10-K filed March 15, 2004, Form 10-Q filed May 10, 2004, Form 10-Q filed August 12, 2004, and Form 10-Q filed November 9, 2004.
    Tumbleweed assumes no obligation to update information contained in this press release, which represents the Company's expectations only as of the date of this release and should not be viewed as a statement about the Company's expectations after such date. Although this release may remain available on the Company's website or elsewhere, its continued availability does not indicate that the Company is reaffirming or confirming any of the information contained herein.

--30--CRD/sf*

CONTACT: Atomic PR James Hannon, 415-402-0230 james@atomicpr.com

KEYWORD: CALIFORNIA INDUSTRY KEYWORD: HARDWARE BANKING TELECOMMUNICATIONS SOFTWARE PRODUCT SOURCE: Tumbleweed Communications Corp.

Copyright Business Wire 2005