The Nasdaq stock exchange was offline for three hours on Thursday, an embarrassing snafu that quickly prompted briefings for President Barack Obama and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew.

While the economic damage of the outage appeared minimal — stocks actually climbed by Thursday’s close — it’s another black eye for Nasdaq, which botched last year’s high-profile public offering for Facebook.

It also raises big questions about the technological stability of stock exchanges more than three years after a glitch triggered the so-called flash crash that shaved nearly 1,000 points off the Dow Jones Industrial Average in just a few minutes.

( Also on POLITICO: Nasdaq resumes trading after outage)

“The knee-jerk reaction is the financial services committees in the Congress and Senate will look at this and say, ‘You’ve got to fix it and protect the investing public’ — the usual pitchforks and torches,” said John Rapa, president and chief executive of management consulting firm Tellefsen and Company.

So far, there’s no definitive explanation of what caused the outage. Nasdaq said in a statement that it halted trading after finding that price quotes were not being disseminated by a Securities Industry Processor, which consolidates and distributes prices for the industry. The technical issues were resolved in 30 minutes but it took longer to get everything back to normal because Nasdaq, working with regulators and other exchanges, sought an “orderly reopening of trading.”

SEC Chairwoman Mary Jo White said the incident was “serious and should reinforce our collective commitment to addressing technological vulnerabilities of exchanges and other market participants.”

She pledged to shortly convene a meeting of leaders from the exchanges and others in the market.

SEC Commissioner Luis Aguilar told POLITICO he was in discussions with staff about the outage throughout the day.

“I expect to get a full report from the staff as to the underlying reasons when they know it,” he said.

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Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Johnson (D-S.D.) was aware of the trading halt and committee staff were in contact with the SEC, a spokesman said. Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), chairman of the Securities, Insurance and Investment Subcommittee, had also been briefed, a spokeswoman said.

The SEC is working on a rule that mandates basic technology systems standards at exchanges and aims to improve responses when problems arise. It is also looking at other technological developments like high-frequency trading. The SEC is reviewing comments it received earlier this year on the systems safeguard rule, and White said Thursday that she will work to advance the proposals.

White, who is juggling rulemakings from the 2010 Dodd-Frank law and last year’s JOBS Act, told the Senate Banking Committee in March that there must be a “sense of urgency” to addressing and understanding these “market structure” issues.

Part of the impetus behind the SEC proposing systems requirements for exchanges and others in March was because of Nasdaq’s botched handling of Facebook’s initial public offering last year, when trading of the new stock was delayed. In May, Nasdaq reached a settlement with the SEC in which it agreed to pay a $10 million penalty for the snafu, the largest penalty ever paid by an exchange.

George Canellos, SEC co-director of enforcement, said at the time that the settlement told a tale of “poorly designed systems” and “hasty decision making” that disrupted one of the largest IPOs in history.

“They’re slightly different issues,” Sandler O’Neill & Partners analyst Richard Repetto said. “But regardless, the idea that Nasdaq has had another technology challenge or problem shakes people’s confidence in their marketplace.”

Nasdaq is not alone in contributing to the policy debate around stock trading snafus, technology and market structure.

The May 2010 “flash crash” was a major wake-up call for many. And last year, a glitch cost trading firm Knight Capital hundreds of millions, Bats Global Markets — a newer electronic exchange — fumbled its own IPO and Hurricane Sandy stopped stock trading for two days.

On Tuesday, Goldman Sachs sent options markets into disarray after it sent erroneous orders to a number of exchanges.

Stocks were up after trading resumed Thursday, suggesting that some on Wall Street are getting used to disruptions.

“Was I surprised it happened today when I was about to eat lunch? Yes,” Morningstar equity research analyst Gaston Ceron said. “Is it surprising in general? If somebody had told me a year ago there’s going to be some sort of system problem at Nasdaq sometime in 2013 — not even just Nasdaq but another exchange — I would say yeah, that doesn’t sound too shocking.”

CFTC Commissioner Bart Chilton said he’s worried that Wall Street will become complacent as the frequency of such glitches grow.

“There have been plenty, dozens upon dozens, of technology issues with markets,” he said. “My fear is that exchanges and regulators simply become immune to these things.”

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