Northern Trust Chooses Tumbleweed To Expand Customer Service Offerings

REDWOOD CITY, CA - March 22, 2000 - Tumbleweed® Communications Corp. (Nasdaq:TMWD), a leading provider of secure Internet communications services, Inc. and the Northern Trust Company (NASDAQ: NTRS), one of the world's leading global custodians, today announced that the Northern Trust Company has licensed Tumbleweed's Integrated Messaging Exchange™ (IME™) to use as its foundation for secure online communication.

Initially, Northern Trust will use Tumbleweed IME, a set of products and services that leverage the Internet and existing email to provide secure and trackable online customer service to its clients, including the company's online "Passport" users. Northern Trust will continue to build on IME to deploy delivery of additional customer communication and financial documents.

"Northern Trust clearly understands how important a secure communications channel is to its commercial and private customers," said Jeffrey C. Smith, president and CEO, Tumbleweed Communications Corp. "They are aggressively moving to build services that will distinguish them from their competitors."

"Deploying Tumbleweed IME further enhances and builds our customer relationships," said Timothy J. Theriault, Chief Technology Officer, Northern Trust Company. "The robust IME platform supports our strategy to become a leader in the use of technology for the benefit of our customers."

Tumbleweed IME is integrated with Northern Trust's web and security infrastructure, ensuring that the customer's user experience is seamless and familiar. With IME, Northern Trust customers are assured of the highest security. In addition, customers do not need to install any new software to receive or send confidential documents via IME.

About Tumbleweed Communications Corp.
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 the security features of Tumbleweed's products and the activities of any third party. 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 30, 2001 and Form 10-Q filed November 13, 2001. Tumbleweed assumes no obligation to update information contained in this press release.