Tumbleweed Press Releases
Tumbleweed and Tunitas Group Partner To Offer Quick-Start Program For HIPAA-Compliant Secure Email
"HIPAA Accelerator for Secure Redirect" Assists Healthcare Organizations to Develop and Manage Policy for Exchanging Protected Health Information (PHI) Via Secure Email
Redwood City, CA - September 15, 2003 - Tumbleweed® Communications Corp. (NASDAQ:TMWD), a leading provider of mission-critical Internet communications software for enterprises, financial services organizations and government, announced today a strategic agreement with Tunitas Group, a healthcare consulting firm that helps clients plan and implement their electronic business and communications initiatives. Under this agreement, Tunitas Group will offer the HIPAA Accelerator for Secure Redirect™ to help Tumbleweed customers develop their enterprise-wide strategy for securing email channels with covered entities, business associates, and plan members/patients.
Tumbleweed's secure email product, Tumbleweed Secure Redirect™, allows healthcare organizations to automatically identify, encrypt and deliver email containing protected health information (PHI), regardless of what email client users have on their desktops. The HIPAA Accelerator Program offers Tumbleweed Secure Redirect customers a practical, hands-on workshop for developing the policy and procedures that encapsulate the customer's secure email strategy and which unleash the power of Secure Redirect to securely communicate PHI.
"Secure email policy can be quite complex for the typical healthcare organization due to the dynamic nature and the breadth of purpose for which patient information is shared with large numbers of healthcare trading partners, business associates, and professionals, " said Ann Geyer, Tunitas Group Healthcare Practice Partner. "The development cycle for establishing policy and standardized procedures is often lengthy causing deferred or incomplete implementations. The HIPAA Accelerator for Secure Redirect program is designed to shorten the implementation cycle, simplify the management of secure email, and thereby maximize the organization's Tumbleweed investment."
Using a proven best-practices approach, Tunitas Group consultants work closely with the organization's team, including privacy officers, security officers, email administrators, medical records staff etc., to develop messaging policies and procedures for authentication, encryption, and disclosure management consistent with their HIPAA privacy and security compliance requirements.
The HIPAA Accelerator for Secure Redirect program includes the following activities:
- Review of existing email policies, with recommendations to bring them into compliance with HIPAA privacy and security regulations, trading partner requirements, and patient/physician expectations
- Establish trading partners profiles describing their capabilities and requirements for secure communications
- Train client staff on procedures for translating organizational email privacy and security policy into Tumbleweed configurations appropriate for the following technologies:
- Gateway-to-gateway S/MIME
- Gateway-to-desktop S/MIME
- Browser-based, password-protected Secure Envelope™
- Browser-based, authenticated HTTPS delivery
- Establish procedures for responding to non-compliant messages from HIPAA covered entities or business associates
- Outline ongoing audit requirements
- Recommend Tumbleweed product configurations to support audit data collection requirements
- Develop recommendations for incorporating secure messaging requirements into trading partner and/or business associate agreements
- Prepare a flexible work plan to implement the exchange of secure messages, based on the policies, strategies, and procedures created during the workshop
"Many people do not realize that regular email is not secure, and yet email is becoming a mission-critical way to communicate with trading partners, physicians, patients, members and other covered entities" said Dave Jevans, Senior Vice President of Marketing for Tumbleweed Communications. "We're pleased to offer our customers the business and technical expertise that Tunitas Group brings to secure messaging and HIPAA compliance. Their years of experience guiding healthcare IT organizations will help our customers build out and manage the secure communications infrastructures that are so needed in the healthcare and insurance industries."
About the Tumbleweed Secure Redirect
Tumbleweed Secure Redirect is server software that automatically secures and encrypts outbound enterprise email based on company-defined security policies - without user intervention. Through intelligent, policy-based routing and encryption, Secure Redirect enables organizations to safely use email to communicate with customers, partners, and suppliers by automatically applying the most appropriate security delivery method for each recipient. Secure Redirect offers numerous ways of delivering secure email, including S/MIME encrypted email, secure web delivery with email notification, and Secure Envelope encrypted attachments. This multi-channel capability delivers the industry's broadest set of secure delivery options to ensure ease of use and rapid adoption, regardless of what email client users have on their desktops.
About Tumbleweed
Tumbleweed is a leading provider of solutions for managing secure communication and collaboration to enable the business Internet. Tumbleweed's robust policy-based framework empowers organizations to safely share and protect critical information, increase customer loyalty and privacy and dramatically reduce costs. Tumbleweed is trusted by 1,000 blue-chip customers including American Express, Chevron, Datek Online, the European Union's Joint Research Council, First Union Wachovia, John Deere, Merrill Lynch, Nike, Northern Trust, NTT, Salomon Smith Barney, Travelers and US Food and Drug Administration. One hundred of the Fortune 500 are Tumbleweed customers. Tumbleweed Communications was founded in 1993 and is headquartered in Redwood City, Calif., with offices around the world.
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 any legal or judicial interpretation of Tumbleweed's patents. 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 20, 2003. Tumbleweed assumes no obligation to update information contained in this press release.
|
| ### |
Contact:
Atomic PR
James Hannon
415/703-9454
james@atomicpr.com
Copyright 2001-2004
Tumbleweed Communications Corp.
All Rights Reserved
|
|
|
