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Diagnostic Ultrasound Deploys Tumbleweed and Blocks Nearly 80% of Inbound Email as Spam

Tumbleweed's Dynamic Anti-Spam Service Blocks Unwanted Email at the Network Perimeter

Redwood City, CA — December 13, 2004 — Tumbleweed® Communications Corp. (NASDAQ:TMWD), the leading provider of email and file transfer security solutions, today announced that Diagnostic Ultrasound Corporation, a leading developer of innovative medical ultrasound devices, has implemented Tumbleweed’s Email Firewall and Dynamic Anti-spam Service (DAS) to intercept spam, invalid email, and viruses automatically.

For Diagnostic Ultrasound, spam had become a significant problem for employees, executives, and IT staff alike. Many users were spending over 20 minutes per day deleting unwanted or offensive email that their previous anti-spam solution was unable correctly to identify and block. Up to 64,000 messages per day were being sent to invalid addresses, causing an additional drain on IT resources, bandwidth and storage. Diagnostic Ultrasound required a robust email security solution that would protect employees and their systems from unwanted content – accurately blocking messages containing viruses, spam, and invalid addresses at the perimeter while efficiently delivering authentic messages to recipients.

After assessing email security offerings from multiple vendors to determine which solution would provide the most thorough anti-spam relief, Diagnostic Ultrasound selected Tumbleweed's Email Firewall and Dynamic Anti-spam Service, which provided immediate relief. Upon installation, Tumbleweed’s product provided immediate benefits, and automated updates ensure continued effectiveness without adding administrative overhead. The installation of Tumbleweed's Email Firewall and Dynamic Anti-spam Service (DAS) resulted in the immediate blocking of 78% of email traffic as unwanted, with virtually no false positives.

Tumbleweed’s support team has also far exceeded Diagnostic Ultrasound’s expectations, providing excellent support and response times on an on-going basis. To solve the flood of emails being sent to invalid email addresses, Tumbleweed’s Global Support organization developed an LDAP procedure to import valid user IDs that allowed real-time user validation from their LDAP directory on their email server.

“Prior to deploying Tumbleweed’s Email Firewall and Dynamic Anti-spam service, 70,000 out of 90,000 incoming email messages – nearly eighty percent – were unwanted, either because they were spam, or because they were being sent to invalid email addresses,” said Arlen Duncan, Director of IT, CISSP Certified for Diagnostic Ultrasound. “We decided to get serious about addressing this issue because it was causing significant drag on our network traffic and impacted employee productivity. Implementing Tumbleweed’s Email Firewall and Dynamic Anti-spam service has virtually eliminated our spam problem, and dramatically reduced the amount of email being processed by our server.”

“Inbound email sent to invalid email addresses are a big drain on our customers’ email servers, taking up valuable processing time, slowing network traffic, and forcing the email server to respond to invalid email addresses,” said John Thielens, Chief Technology Officer for Tumbleweed Communications. “Tumbleweed has been able to solve Diagnostic Ultrasound’s problem in handling invalid email addresses through a combination of technology and superior technical support.”

About Tumbleweed's Email Firewall
Tumbleweed Email Firewall has been recognized as the highest-ranked email security product functionality by META Group, the #1 enterprise software solution for fighting spam according to Network World (http://www.nwfusion.com/reviews/2003/0915spam.html), and the #1 email firewall software for large enterprises by Information Security Magazine. 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 over 400 of the largest, most demanding messaging infrastructures in the world, 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 the top anti-spam software and appliance 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 the Tumbleweed email firewall with new heuristic defenses as they are published, similar to the way anti-virus engines work. The email firewall includes a highly effective Spam Analysis Engine, which automates the identification of spam using powerful heuristics-based analysis technology; typical customers see an immediate 90%+ capture rate with one-tenth of one percent false positive rate before tuning. 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 Diagnostic Ultrasound
Diagnostic Ultrasound fills a unique niche in the ultrasound industry, specializing in the development, manufacture, and distribution of portable, application specific ultrasound devices. The company’s mission is to advance patient care by making noninvasive ultrasound more accessible to providers. Diagnostic Ultrasound’s BladderScan® is the accepted standard of care for bladder volume measurement. Compared with conventional 2D ultrasound, the company’s patented V-MODE® technology is more accurate, less expensive, and easier to use. Founded in 1984, Diagnostic Ultrasound has grown from a small start-up venture to an international corporation with annual sales of over $30 million USD. For more information, visit http://www.dxu.com/.

About Tumbleweed
A leading email security, file transfer security and identity validation company with more than 10 years in the business, Tumbleweed provides comprehensive solutions for managing mission critical data communication channels. From our e-mail security suite, point solutions for Spam, inbound and outbound filtering, to secure file transfer and certificate authentication, Tumbleweed has a variety of solutions currently used by enterprises and governments to help mitigate risk and increase network bandwidth. Tumbleweed 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, and the US Navy and Marine Corps. 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, Dynamic Anti-Spam Service, and customer support. 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.

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