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Tumbleweed Extends Validation Authority Product Family; Releases Identity Management Appliance

Valicert Validation Authority Now Includes a Turn-Key Digital Certificate Validation Appliance

Redwood City, CA – June 13, 2004 - Tumbleweed® Communications Corp. (Nasdaq:TMWD- News), a leading provider of secure Internet messaging software and hardware for enterprises and government agencies, announced today the release of the Valicert Validation Authority (VA) Repeater Appliance.

The new appliance is part of the innovative VA Repeater-Responder architecture, which allows customers to scale their digital certificate validation infrastructure without incurring the expense of additional hardware security modules. Based on the Repeater Server, this flexible and robust distributed architecture enables organizations to achieve a high-performance, high-availability, secure solution for real-time Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) digital certificate validation. The VA Repeater Appliance provides a turn-key solution for digital certificate status caching utilizing open standards such as the Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP) defined by the IETF (RFC 2560).

The VA Repeater Appliance can be loaded with pre-computed OCSP responses or it can dynamically build up its cache through proxy client requests to a VA Responder Server. Since the VA Repeater Appliance caches responses generated and digitally signed by the VA Responder Server, it does not require a hardware signing module and can easily reside in a different administrative domain than the Responder Server itself. The VA Repeater Appliance leverages the secure, hardened Linux-based platform of Tumbleweed’s award-winning MailGate appliance. The VA Repeater appliance can be fully installed and configured in less than thirty minutes, and offers customers an easy to deploy and manage solution for digital certificate status caching at lowest total cost of ownership (TCO).

“The VA Repeater Appliance represents an important addition to the Tumbleweed Valicert Identity Management product line,” said John Hines, Director of Validation Authority Product Development. “By allowing the status of a digital certificate to be cached, our Repeater-Responder architecture was uniquely suited for offering a Repeater-style appliance. This turn-key solution to digital certificate validation is the first of its kind, and represents considerable savings in total cost of ownership. Additionally since our solution is entirely based on open standards, enterprises can be confident their PKI investments are sound.”

The VA Repeater Appliance will be demonstrated at the 2004 PKI/PKE Forum, the theme of which will be Identity Management. This Department of Defense Information Assurance event will be held June 14-18 at the Fairmont Hotel in New Orleans, LA.

About the Tumbleweed Valicert Validation Authority
Validation Authority (VA) ensures the validity and integrity of highly valued and trusted transactions. Validation Authority is a Certificate Authority (CA) neutral, extensible server that utilizes multiple validation protocols for checking the validity of X.509 certificates within Public Key (PKI) environments.

Validation Authority delivers a comprehensive, scalable, and reliable framework for validating digital certificates in real time.

The Validation Authority is the:

• Recognized leader in the field and is deployed at the majority of Identrus member banks
• Most widely deployed OCSP responder in the US Department of Defense PKI.

In addition to the Valicert Validation Authority, Tumbleweed also offers a suite of plug-in applications to simplify certificate validation processing at the application level. Server Validator (SV) is a plug-in for the most widely used Secure Web Servers on multiple OS platforms. Desktop Validator (DV) is a Microsoft OS based plug-in that provides highly flexible validation options for Microsoft Windows based applications.

About Tumbleweed Communications Corp.
Tumbleweed is a leading provider of mission-critical Internet communications software products for enterprises, financial services organizations and government. By making Internet communications secure, reliable and automated, Tumbleweed's email firewall, secure file transfer, secure email, and identity validation solutions help customers significantly reduce the cost of doing business. Tumbleweed products are used by millions of end-users and tens of thousands of corporations. Tumbleweed customers include ABN Amro, Bank of America Securities, Catholic Healthcare West, 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. Tumbleweed Communications 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 current plans and expectations, 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 usage, features, and performance of Tumbleweed’s Valicert Validation Authority products. 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 and Form 10-Q filed May 10, 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 either company's website or elsewhere, its continued availability does not indicate that either company is reaffirming or confirming any of the information contained herein.

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