diff --git a/cve_bin_tool/version_compare.py b/cve_bin_tool/version_compare.py
index 775abd1a72..962c96fe11 100644
--- a/cve_bin_tool/version_compare.py
+++ b/cve_bin_tool/version_compare.py
@@ -40,14 +40,11 @@ def parse_version(version_string: str):
     versionString = version_string.strip()
     versionArray = []
 
-    # convert - and _ to be treated like . below
+    # convert all non alpha-numeric characters to be treated like . below
     # we could switch to a re split but it seems to leave blanks so this is less hassle
-    versionString = versionString.replace("-", ".")
-    versionString = versionString.replace("_", ".")
-    versionString = versionString.replace("+", ".")
-    # Note: there may be other non-alphanumeric characters we want to add here in the
-    # future, but we'd like to look at those cases before adding them in case the version
-    # logic is very different.
+    versionString = re.sub("[^0-9a-zA-Z]+", ".", versionString)
+
+    # Note: This expression may need improvement if we need to handle unicode
 
     # Attempt a split
     split_version = versionString.split(".")