The Futures Industry Association’s (FIA) Market Technology Division (MTD) published a report of recommendations to prepare the industry for the leap second event on June 30.

A leap second is the addition of an extra second at the end of the day to realign the Coordinated Universal Time standard with mean solar time. Periodically adding the leap second corrects for irregularities in the earth’s rate of rotation.

The last leap second occurred on June 30, 2012. Several systems, including Internet servers, encountered issues processing the additional second. Leap second computer issues could disrupt trading operations across exchanges, clearinghouses, brokers, investors and financial industry service providers.

The FIA MTD’s report provides recommendations on how to develop and implement a continuity and recovery plan, implement enterprise time management, update vulnerable systems, actively monitor critical systems and possibly adjust market activity. The report also provides a global exchange matrix delineating each exchange’s plan for the leap second addition, an overview of Network Time Protocol and Precision Time Protocol, a comparison of leap second dilution before and after the event, and hardware and software resources for leap second information.

FIA MTD’s Preparing For Leap Second Report is available here.