Cisco Systems said it has commercially introduced a switch that can route trading messages through its circuitry and back out onto a wire in under one microsecond.

EDGAR Online Inc., a global provider of XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) software, services and data, reports that it experienced a 280% year-over-year increase in XBRL filings in the third quarter.

The “smoking guns” were dropped in a Chicago river. Only the “guns” were not guns. They were hard drives. And the suspect is not a gangster, a la Al Capone. Instead, it is a programmer and former employee of Citadel, the computer-driven hedge fund in the Windy City.

Direct Edge has been sanctioned for weak internal controls that led to millions of dollars in trading losses and a systems outage.

John Hancock Funds has made a number of enhancements to its Portfolio Insight tool for financial advisors, including the ability to compare portfolios side by side and see full transparency into holdings.

Fidelity Information Services tops the rankings in 2011 of the largest financial technology vendors in the world, according to the eighth annual FinTech 100 survey compiled by IDC Financial Insights, American Banker and Bank Technology News.

Financial Tracking Technologies said its insider trading detection technology has been expanded to cover international markets.

LPL Financial Retirement Partners has rolled out the next iteration of its portfolio of tools for retirement plan advisors working with plan sponsors.

Advisor Software this week launched goalgamiPro, a web-based financial planning tool that lets advisors create and maintain multiple household balance sheets to help prioritize and access their clients’ long-term financial goals.

Citigroup is adopting a managed service from Fidessa Group for tracking orders and executing trades globally in listed derivatives.

Direct Edge said it is preparing to deliver a database of trade and quote history that is available anywhere, online.

Anova Technologies said it is rolling out a technology that will encrypt trading instructions in under one millionth of a second.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch has unveiled a new set of features for its 401(k) and employee financial benefit programs including new mobile access to retirement account information.

In July, forward-thinking fund managers were trying to figure out what might happen to their holdings if -- heaven forbid -- the unimaginable might occur. In this case, the unimaginable was whether a major ratings agency might downgrade U.S. debt, given the fractiousness of American political decision-making.

NYSE Euronext said activity on its U.S. stock exchanges fell 19.8 percent in September from August.

Risk management software firm Algorithmics said that it will work with Societe Generale Corporate & Investment Banking to develop a counterparty credit valuation adjustment product that SocGen can use to actively price and manage counterparty credit risk across all asset classes.

BNY Mellon Shareholder Services has launched Mobile Proxy Voting, enabling client companies to extend electronic proxy voting to smartphones, tablets and other web-connected mobile devices.

One or more Internet users claiming to be the digital activist group known as Anonymous Hackers said overnight that it intends to take down the New York Stock Exchange’s public website next week.

An advisor’s website is his or her most valuable piece of Internet real estate. TJ Gilsenan, the Web Savvy Advisor, explains not only why, but provides five important steps every advisor can take now to create and maintain a more effective website.

Renaissance Capital has installed trade surveillance software from Redkite Financial Markets.