Friday February 18 5:21 PM ET
Schwab Checks Software After Web Site Outage
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Charles Schwab Corp.'s (NYSE:SCH - news) Web site suffered a brief outage on Friday afternoon, preventing customers of the No. 1 U.S. discount brokerage from funneling stock orders through the Internet for 30 minutes.
A software error probably caused the problem, a spokesman said, adding Schwab was still investigating. The outage was not brought about by computer hackers purposely sabotaging the site, the spokesman said.
U.S. and Canadian law enforcement agencies have been looking for the hackers whom they say briefly closed down some of the Internet's most popular sites last week, including those of Yahoo! Inc. (NasdaqNM:YHOO - news) and Schwab rival E+Trade Group Inc. (NasdaqNM:EGRP - news).
``We experienced a problem with our electronic channels,' the Schwab spokesman said. ``We switched over to a back-up system, and some customers would have experienced a problem accessing our electronic systems when we made that transition.'
San Francisco-based Schwab is investigating the root cause of the problem, the spokesman said, declining further comment.
The Schwab outage lasted from 1:45 p.m., EST to 2:15 p.m., the spokesman said, but customers could still place stock orders by calling one of Schwab's brokers.
The outage coincided with computer problems at the technical center of the No. 2 U.S. stock exchange, Nasdaq. As a result, the Nasdaq could not update its composite index, which functions as a barometer for technology stocks.
Online brokers faced many outages last year. Most firms, including Schwab, beefed up their sites' capacity and added back-up systems. |
