NASDAQ was hit by a technical glitch on Tuesday 29 October when an hour-long outage forced the company to halt trading in derivative contracts linked to the NASDAQ 100.
This the third major technical glitch for NASDAQ in three months when a break down in August lead to a three-hour outage, followed by a shorter shutdown in September.
As a result, NASDAQ paid a $10m penalty to settle federal civil charges in May after regulators said its systems and decisions disrupted Facebook’s flotation last year.
With NASDAQ hosting Facebook and Apple amongst other tech giants, it is becoming a specialist in technology shares.
Neil Kinson, vice president EMEA, Redwood Software commented: "Blaming its most recent disruption on "human error", NASDAQ’s string of technology mishaps raises questions about just how seamless its IT processes really are. It also confirms what we have long known – businesses hinge on having up-to-the-minute, accurate data on claimants and their applications.
"If NASDAQ is to solve its current predicament and prevent further technology mishaps, it needs to automate manual checks for its systems in order to reduce the likelihood of human errors. By using tightly automated processes to keep everything running smoothly, IT teams will only need to handle technical glitches on exception. Collaboration across the business model will be key if NASDAQ is to sustain market confidence – it’s far more than just reputations on the line here."
