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Tumbleweed Communications
Corp.
700
Saginaw Drive
Redwood City, CA 94063
(650) 216-2000
www.tumbleweed.com
Sales
$31
million
Business Description
Tumbleweed Communications Corp. (“Tumbleweed” or “we”) is a leading provider
of secure Internet messaging software products for enterprises and
government. Our solutions are used by companies when email, file transfer or
Web communications are mission-critical. By making Internet communications
secure, reliable and automated, our products help customers significantly
reduce their cost of doing business.
We have more than 700 enterprise customers who use our products to connect
with over ten thousand corporations and millions of end-users. Tumbleweed’s
market focus is in the financial services, healthcare and insurance,
government and enterprise markets. Our customers include ABN Amro Bank,
Catholic Healthcare West, Bank of America Securities, JP Morgan Chase & Co.,
The Regence Group (Blue Cross/Blue Shield), Society for Worldwide Interbank
Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), St. Luke’s Episcopal Healthcare System,
the US Food and Drug Administration, and the US Navy and Marine Corps.
Our software solutions are:
• Email Firewall and Dynamic Anti-Spam Service to protect companies from
“spam” junk email, viruses, and to implement content filtering for
regulatory compliance
• Secure File Transfer for automating the transfer of payments files,
Electronic Data Interchange (“EDI”) files, check images and other
business-critical information between corporations, banks and processors
• Secure Email and Document Delivery for protecting confidential information
such as patient records and financial statements
• Identity Validation to authorize users to access secure computing systems
and to digitally sign files and transactions
Tumbleweed’s Secure Internet Messaging Applications and Services
We offer a comprehensive family of secure messaging software applications
that enable enterprises to leverage the cost-efficiencies and productivity
of Internet communications. In addition, all of our solutions are designed
to integrate with existing business and email systems, requiring no
significant change in existing firewall or system infrastructures. Our
applications can be purchased independently or together to create a secure
Internet communications solution for businesses. All of our solutions offer
multi-level security using industry standards, universal access, and proven
scalability for high volume message traffic.
Tumbleweed Email Firewall and Dynamic Anti-Spam Service
The Tumbleweed Email Firewall (formerly called Tumbleweed MMS) allows
enterprises to apply anti-spam filtering, anti-virus scanning, encryption
and content policy to inbound and outbound email communications, at the
email gateway. The Tumbleweed Email Firewall enables companies to centrally
control, manage and monitor their Internet email communications stream. This
allows our customers to improve their capability to comply with their
internal corporate policies as well as government regulations.
Tumbleweed’s Dynamic Anti-Spam Service (DAS) provides daily updates of
anti-spam filtering rules including URL block lists, heuristic filter data
and blacklisted domain listings. The DAS service ensures that the Email
Firewall adapts to the changing nature of unwanted spam messages, thereby
providing effective blocking of spam email at the email gateway without
requiring tuning by the customer.
The Email Firewall features a Secure Policy Gateway for centralized policy
enforcement, and a suite of software process managers and optional
applications that can be quickly configured to define and enforce the
policies appropriate to a particular business. The Email Firewall Content
Manager scans messages and attachments for specific words or strings of
words. When a policy violation is detected, Tumbleweed Email Firewall can
take a number of actions, such as block, quarantine, archive, or defer
delivery. With the Email Firewall Access Manager, companies can set policies
that restrict access of email communications from certain senders or those
sent to certain recipients. For example, policies can block inbound messages
from known problem or spam domains, or prevent confidential information from
being sent to an unwanted domain.
The Email Firewall Virus Manager uses integrated server-based anti-virus
software from Network Associates to detect and optionally clean or strip
infected attachments in both incoming and outgoing messages. This provides a
first-layer of anti-virus defense, by filtering viruses out before they
enter a corporation’s network and email servers.
The Email Firewall can encrypt and digitally sign email messages as they are
sent from the server, allowing companies to secure their email
communications with other companies who are using S/MIME-compliant email
products (S/MIME is an industry standard for encrypted email). The Email
Firewall also decrypts incoming emails and verifies digital signatures on
incoming emails. Content policies can be configured by companies so that
signed emails from customers or partners bypass the anti-spam filters,
thereby giving a higher level of assurance that emails will be delivered
securely and reliably between trusted business partners. For communicating
with end-users who do not have S/MIME compliant email software, the Email
Firewall can integrate with the Tumbleweed Secure Redirect product for
secure Web-based email delivery.
Tumbleweed Secure File Transfer
The Tumbleweed SecureTransport product family is file transfer software for
sending and receiving business files over the Internet securely and
reliably. SecureTransport is used by companies to communicate with their
customers, partners and suppliers. SecureTransport can be used to send small
business-critical messages, as well as to reliably deliver very large files
that can exceed one gigabyte in size.
The Tumbleweed SecureTransport product family includes server software,
client software, and toolkits for customization and integration into
business systems. SecureTransport allows file transfers to be initiated
interactively by users who access the server with a standard Web browser or
an interactive client software. SecureTransport also allows transfers to be
initiated automatically, according to schedules or driven by back-office
enterprise systems. Incoming and outgoing files can be connected to existing
back-office systems through a Java-based Transaction Manager.
SecureTransport is used by enterprises to send EDI files to suppliers in
their supply chain. It is also used extensively in the financial services
markets to send and receive corporate payment messages, check images,
reports, and other kinds of financial messages. Because SecureTransport is
compliant with the Internet security requirements of the U.S. Healthcare
Information Portability and Accountability Act (“HIPAA”), it is used
extensively in the insurance and healthcare markets to move patient records,
billing information and EDI files.
Tumbleweed Secure Email and Document Delivery
Tumbleweed Secure Redirect is server-based software that enables any
Internet email server to send and receive email and documents securely.
Companies use Secure Redirect to securely communicate over the Internet with
individuals or companies, without requiring those end-users to have any kind
of secure email software. Recipients of messages only need an e-mail program
and a web browser to receive encrypted messages.
Tumbleweed Secure Redirect can scan the content of outgoing messages
originating from groupware applications or web-based email applications and
then encrypt those communications for delivery depending upon a company’s
policies. Recipients can be authenticated by a variety of methods, using
known information about the recipient or by tying into an internal
authentication database or system existing within the company (lightweight
directory access protocol, directory, single sign-on directory, etc.).
Tumbleweed Secure Redirect also allows enterprises to apply security to
emails originating from an internal customer relationship management system.
The advantages of Tumbleweed Secure Redirect include:
• complements rather than replaces existing groupware applications and
information technology systems;
• universal coverage and ubiquitous reach (all groupware communications can
be automatically managed and secured, any e-mail client and/or web browser
can accept the encrypted messages);
• based on open standards, so that it works with whatever software and
hardware a particular partner is using;
• applies security automatically at the server level, without requiring end
users to replace the client software they are already familiar with;
• expedited training (end users need not learn new procedures or new
software tools); and
• cost-effective (no expenses for end user training or distributing,
installing, or maintaining new desktop software).
Tumbleweed Secure Redirect is used in the insurance and healthcare markets
to communicate between patients, doctors, hospitals and pharmacies. It is
used in financial services to send bank and brokerage statements to
customers securely. The manufacturing and logistics industries use Secure
Redirect to encrypt email communications across their supply chains.
Tumbleweed Identity Validation
Tumbleweed Valicert Validation Authority is a family of client and server
software for validating the identity of users on the Internet in real-time.
The Validation Authority allows digital certificate credentials to be used
to authenticate users to computers and software applications, sign documents
and encrypt email.
The process of digital certificate validation is similar to the process used
to authorize credit card transactions. To begin with, a relying party, which
is client or server software that checks signed data using another private
key, verifies that the certificate has not been revoked, as part of the
run-time use of digital certificates. Then a certificate chain should be
constructed, up to a trusted root. Each certificate can then be verified to
determine that it has not been revoked.
The Validation Authority can validate a certificate issued by any
Certificate Authority (CA). The Enterprise Validation Authority is a robust,
fourth generation server that provides online validation support using
industry standards. It integrates with major Certificate Authority (CA)
products and services including those from Baltimore Unicert, Entrust PKI,
Microsoft CA, AOL/Netscape CMS and SunValidation Authority (VA) and delivers
a comprehensive, scalable, and reliable framework for validating digital
certificates in real time.
The Tumbleweed Valicert Validation Authority product family is comprised of
the Enterprise Validation Authority server, Server Validator, Validator
Toolkit, and Desktop Validator. The product family is used by financial
institutions to authenticate the identity of banks, payment networks and
business customers for high-value communications and transactions. In the
government sector, the Tumbleweed Valicert Validation Authority product
family is used in the Department of Defense for authentication to computers
and applications, and for verifying the identity of email senders.
Tumbleweed Professional Services
The following are examples of the professional services we offer:
• Support and maintenance, which assists customers in managing Tumbleweed
products they have deployed.
• Integration consulting, which allows our customers to integrate our
solutions with existing technology infrastructure, including legacy systems,
customer databases, support systems, and billing systems.
• Technical training, which provides the customer with formal training in
the administration and operation of our products and use of Tumbleweed
application programming interfaces, or APIs.
Our products are generally deployed in business-critical environments, where
highly responsive customer support is critical to the continuing success of
the deployed solution. We maintain a centralized technical support group
that is responsible for first-line and second-line customer support as well
as distribution of products and documentation updates. This group works
closely with our professional services and product development organizations
in order to ensure continuity in the areas of problem resolution and
priority response.
We also offer extended customer assistance 24 hours a day, 7 days a week,
for those customers requiring around the clock support. Pricing for such
support is negotiated separately and is in addition to our standard fees.
Professional services are performed for an additional fee and are offered in
conjunction with the licensing or deployment of our products.
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