Tangent's ``Barracuda'' Stops Spam Before It Reaches Your Network -- Enterprise Spam Filtering Solution Kills Spam and Viruses Preemptively.

BURLINGAME, Calif. -- Tangent, Inc. today announced Barracuda Release 3.16, its enterprise spam filtering solution that shreds spam and e-mail viruses before they reach an organization's network.

Barracuda, whose pricing starts as low as $1,000 per year for up to 1,000 email accounts, is a preemptive approach to stopping spam, unlike the scores of spam filtering software and appliances on the market that operate inside the network.

Tangent, which has provided technology solutions to the education, government and corporate markets for over 16 years, has quickly become the largest supplier of hosted spam filtering services to education and government markets during the past two years.

"Barracuda kills spam and related viruses before they reach a network," said Doug Monsour, President and CEO of Tangent. "There's no software or hardware to install or configure. It causes no disruption to an organization's existing email services."

Tangent's Spam Filtering Operations Centers reside on a worldwide 23,000-mile fiber-optic network that provides seamless, route-diverse connections to over 950 global access points. Tangent's solution insures that spam and viruses are killed before they reach your network because its filters sit between the Internet and the user's network.

Network availability is not comprised. Tangent maintains 99.98 percent network availability at all times, and an average latency of 40 milliseconds or less in all regions (25ms in North America, 15ms in Europe).

Anti-Virus protection is built-in. Updates are posted hourly to ensure the latest virus definitions are in place. Tangent Barracuda also scans and blocks known malicious file type attachments, such as VB script, from entering the network through emails.

The new release provides enhanced virus protection with more variants of password protected archives now caught. Version 3.16 also provides added support for real-time lookups in the intention analysis engine, which results in a significantly higher accuracy in detecting new forms of spam.

Other enhancements include improved cluster synchronization for clusters with a large number of users; the ability to classify as spam and not-spam messages in the user quarantine area and the storing of all quarantined messages redundantly (each account has a primary and backup server in the cluster)

Other key features of Tangent's Barracuda solution include:

Blacklisting of large known spammers; keyword scanning; checksum technology, message authenticity check; blacklist / white list Domains, IP's, and email addresses; and rate controls to stop denial of service attacks.

About Tangent Inc.

Founded in 1989, Tangent has more than 16 years experience, focused on delivering technology solutions to education, government and corporate markets. Customers include more than 350 universities and colleges, 2,490 school districts, and 430 government agencies and corporations.

Tangent solutions include Packet Hawk (www.packethawk.com) the industry's first enterprise anti-spyware network appliance, Active Directory tools for schools, Migration services, and SIF integration.

Tangent's award-winning technology; including desktops, notebooks, wireless labs, thin clients, and servers, have earned numerous honors including eight Editor's Choice awards from PC Magazine, Recommended Product awards from Windows Magazine, and Best Buy awards from PC World.

For more information, contact Mike Zabaneh, 650-342-9388 ext. 2126, or email [e-mail].

(C)2005 Tangent, Inc. All rights reserved. Tangent and the Tangent logo are registered trademarks.