BEAVERTON, Ore. – An upgraded e-mail firewall at First Tech Credit Union is now putting the brakes on as many as 140,000 incoming suspect messages a month. The MailGate Email Firewall and Secure Messenger system from Tumbleweed Communications Corp. also is providing secure outbound transmission, including encrypting and routing of sensitive member information, for more than 4,300 e-mails per month leaving the $1.5 billion credit union. Brad Beals, information security engineer at First Tech (www.firsttech.org), says several product suggestions he made at Tumbleweed user group meeting have been implemented in the latest version, which "provides us with a highly scalable system that protects, filters, and secures our e-mail traffic, ensuring our members a safe and highly efficient method of communication." Joe Fisher, vice president of marketing at Redwood City, Calif.-based Tumbleweed (www.tumbleweed.com), says, "With the recent breaches in data privacy, hacking and data loss, protecting and securing online customer data has become a critical requirement for financial institutions."