"Human error" caused an outage in Nasdaq index data for 44 minutes Tuesday afternoon, the exchange said.

"The disruption was caused by a human error performing an operational function which resulted in the incorrect delivery of data to the index distribution system," Nasdaq said in a statement.

Before the freeze, the Composite index last stood at 3,940.02. Once it resumed, it rose 3 points to 3,943.



(Read more: Nasdaq takes responsibility for August 'flash freeze')

Nasdaq also reported at one point that some options had halted trading because of a lack of index data.

The exchange said the problem stemmed from a data dissemination platform called GIDS 2.0, or Global Index Data Service. It launched in April 2012, according to technical documents on the Nasdaq website.

The last major outage, August's "flash freeze," had to do with a platform called the SIP, or security information processor. That is the network that carries the quotes and trades for Nasdaq.

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