Arkansas Blue Cross and Blue Shield Selects Tumbleweed To Facilitate HIPAA Compliance And Reduce Spam
Integrated Anti-Spam Capabilities Allow Arkansas Blue Cross to Turn HIPAA Compliance Expenses Into Cost Savings
REDWOOD CITY, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–May 5, 2003 — Tumbleweed(R) Communications Corp. (Nasdaq:TMWD), a leading provider of mission-critical communications software for businesses and government organizations using the Internet, announced today that Arkansas Blue Cross and Blue Shield, a mutual Insurance Company, has chosen Tumbleweed to help protect patient data and facilitate HIPAA compliance. Arkansas Blue Cross is the tenth Blue plan to select Tumbleweed, the secure messaging market share leader in the health care industry. Tumbleweed’s comprehensive solution combines policy-based secure messaging with powerful anti-spam capabilities.
After an extensive review of requirements and competitive products, Tumbleweed was chosen as the best solution for identifying and protecting both Protected Health Information (PHI) and proprietary Arkansas Blue Cross business information transmitted via e-mail. Arkansas Blue Cross’ requirements included a PHI protection solution which wouldn’t require their partners to install any software, would allow partners to reply and have that information transparently encrypted, and would allow Arkansas Blue Cross to keep patient data under control and on the premises.
“We talked to other Blue plans who were using Tumbleweed’s solutions for the same purposes we were investigating; and all of them gave Tumbleweed’s products stellar reviews for functionality and ease of use,” said Edward Steele, Manager of Infrastructure Management at Arkansas Blue Cross. “This enables us to meet regulatory requirements and realize long-term cost savings at the same time.”
“Healthcare organizations face several challenges in terms of optimizing e-mail hygiene, including compliance with HIPAA regulations, confidentiality of proprietary information, blocking spam and viruses, and enabling automation of business processes,” said Matt Cain, Vice President of the META Group. “Solutions such as Tumbleweed’s that address all of these problems in a tightly integrated solution offer a lower total cost of ownership than deploying and managing multiple, separate point products.”
“Tumbleweed’s solutions for secure messaging were the first to combine content and identity filtering with multiple encryption methods to help enterprises comply with industry regulations and their own privacy and security policies,” said Bill Bradford, Tumbleweed’s Vice President of Marketing. “Having the Arkansas Blue Cross join more than 75 healthcare organizations in trusting us for HIPAA compliance illustrates our continued leadership.”
For more information on Tumbleweed’s solutions for the Healthcare industry, visit the web site at http://www.tumbleweed.com.
About Tumbleweed Communications Corp.
Tumbleweed is a leading provider of mission-critical communications software for businesses and government organizations using the Internet. Tumbleweed provides the security, control, protection and integration necessary to conduct business transactions through e-mail. Using Tumbleweed’s e-mail firewall and secure messaging applications, businesses can stop spam and malicious code before they enter the corporate network, regulate corporate traffic to ensure policy compliance, and secure and automate communications with customers, suppliers, and partners. Tumbleweed is trusted by hundreds of blue-chip customers including Amgen Inc., Bank of America Securities, JP Morgan Chase & Co., Oppenheimer Funds, Inc., The Regence Group (Blue Cross/Blue Shield), Salomon Smith Barney Inc., St. Luke’s Episcopal Healthcare System, TD Waterhouse Investor Services, Inc., the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and the U.S. Navy/Marine Corps. Tumbleweed Communications was founded in 1993 and is headquartered in Redwood City, California. www.tumbleweed.com