Very interesting tool. I work in the financial industry and we are also heavily bound by OFAC. I found your site via a Google search for SDN checking tools.

We are in the process of writing our own SDN checker and, after reading more of the notes on the OFAC site, I’ve been trying to figure out what constitutes a reasonable ‘possible hit’ against the SDN list. We’re looking at Soundex tools and other ways of comparing names. Since the SDN list is full of foreign names the spellings can be written differently in English and will not show up as an exact match. A perfect example is Osama Bin Laden. When he first hit the news after 9/11 the media was spelling his name ‘Usama’ – a non-hit against the list, and a terrible match to miss!

I realize this article is over a year old and the SDNCompliance.com website’s version history is not dated. Do you plan on adding Soundex, or other types of filters to your tool? Yes, it will mean more hits against the list, but Compliance Officers are tasked with making sure they investigate these and often they will be able to clear a hit very quickly.

Interesting software – great article! Keep it coming!