Consent Agreements Demystified: DDTC and SCO Perspectives with Practical Insights for Companies

Reducing enforcement risk before and during a DDTC consent agreement

Consent agreements are among the most serious enforcement tools used by the U.S. Department of State’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (DDTC), yet many companies lack a clear understanding of how they arise, what they require, and how to successfully navigate them.

This webinar provides a practical, experience-driven overview of the consent agreement lifecycle, from enforcement triggers and investigation through remediation, monitoring, and resolution.

Drawing on firsthand experience managing multiple consent agreements as a Senior Compliance Specialist at DDTC and later serving as a Special Compliance Officer (SCO) for a completed agreement, the presenter offers insight into both the regulator and company perspectives. The session combines regulatory expectations with real-world observations from audits, disclosures, monitoring activities, and remediation efforts.

Participants will learn how consent agreements typically develop, including the most common patterns of noncompliance identified by DDTC. These often include control failures, inconsistent procedures, inadequate cybersecurity safeguards, insufficient training and oversight, third-party risk, and systemic weaknesses that remain unnoticed until regulatory scrutiny begins.

From the DDTC perspective, the webinar explains how compliance posture is evaluated, how the scope of a consent agreement is determined, and how remediation progress is assessed. From the SCO perspective, it addresses what effective monitoring looks like in practice, how corrective actions are evaluated, and which company behaviors build credibility with both the SCO and DDTC.