Nasdaq OMX (NASDAQ:NDAQ), which botched Facebook's (NYSE:FB) $16 billion initial public offering in May, similarly blamed a glitch that caused mass confusion over order execution on "poor design."

And stock exchange BATS blamed a serious hiccup during its initial public offering in March that temporarily halted trading of Apple's (NASDAQ:AAPL) stock on a "serious technical failure," while the Royal Bank of Scotland (NYSE:RBS) attributed a backlog of payments one night in June that crippled its system to a "computer glitch."

Of course, there's also the Flash Crash of 2010.

Tech failures have also been blamed for problems outside the financial services industry, including the Alyeska Pipeline spill two years ago that leaked 190,000 gallons of oil and a steam tube leak at a nuclear power plant last month attributed to "modeling errors."

In a world where reliance on technology grows by the minute and human capital struggles to keep pace, a single glitch in a high-volume system can be catastrophic.