CognifAI Assist guides customers in the digital lending and servicing process through voice and visual co-browsing, while ORCA uses 200+ AI agents to orchestrate account-level collections.60-70% of collection journeys completed autonomously without human intervention, driven by outcome-based models.

BENGALURU, India, Oct. 6, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — CreditNirvana, a Perfios company focused on agentic AI-driven debt management, today introduced ORCA and CognifAI Assist, an integrated AI suite that helps lenders collect at 40% lower cost with a 30% higher connect rate, and complete 60-70% of collection journeys autonomously without any human intervention.

As digital lending continues to accelerate, financial institutions face a persistent dual challenge of steep customer drop-off rates during complex onboarding processes like re-KYC and loan origination, paired with escalating debt collection costs caused by rigid, repetitive outreach strategies. Overcoming these hurdles has historically required costly, time-consuming core infrastructure overhauls that slow down innovation and strain operational margins.

CreditNirvana resolves this through a non-intrusive agentic AI layer that can be easily deployed over existing banking portals, mobile applications, and third-party systems without requiring core-system overhauls. CognifAI and ORCA function as AI solutions within CreditNirvana’s broader agentic portfolio, operating with its flagship debt collection platform, Maestro, to deliver targeted automation across distinct stages of the credit lifecycle.

Unlike conventional collections platforms that rely on predefined sequences of calls, messages and follow-ups, ORCA uses an agentic, contextualised and closed-loop approach to decide the next best action for each account, execute it, observe outcomes and adapt subsequent strategies.

Powered by more than 200 specialised AI agents, ORCA coordinates collections across digital, voice, calling, field and legal touchpoints. Lenders define recovery objectives and constraints, while ORCA determines account-level strategies within lender-defined compliance guardrails and with human-in-the-loop control.

Vinay Sathyanarayan, CEO of CreditNirvana, said, “The future of lending lies in making every customer interaction more contextual, efficient and seamless. With CognifAI and ORCA, we are extending the agentic AI layer across the lending lifecycle, from helping customers navigate digital journeys to enabling lenders to make more informed, account-level collections decisions leading to better collection strategy. Our focus is on combining measurable business outcomes with responsible AI deployment, customer experience and compliance guardrails.”

ORCA’s measurement framework incorporates baselines, controls and outcome attribution. Its four interconnected layers – Signals, Decision, Execution and Measurement, continuously assess borrower behaviour, delinquency, promise-keeping and channel response, real time financial data to strategize collections decisions.

Complementing ORCA, CognifAI combines an AI voice assistant capable of conversing across multiple Indian regional languages as well as global languages including Spanish, Mandarin, Arabic, and Bahasa, with secure visual co-browsing to guide customers screen-by-screen through digital lending, origination, and servicing journeys. Operating as an overlay requiring no app downloads, it highlights fields, pre-fills data, and supports in-session rate and tenure negotiations within approved guardrails. To protect sensitive customer information, CognifAI incorporates end-to-end encryption and field-level data masking for PAN, OTP, and account data, enabling lenders to achieve 30% higher journey completion and 35% lower handling time.

Together, CognifAI and ORCA extend AI-led assistance and automation across customer acquisition, onboarding, servicing and collections. Built on CreditNirvana’s enterprise-grade architecture, the platform currently orchestrates over $30 billion in Assets Under Management (AUM) across 100+ million loan accounts.

By unifying real-time voice guidance with autonomous collections intelligence, CreditNirvana is setting a new operational benchmark for digital financial services. As lenders navigate evolving regulatory standards and rising customer expectations, this enterprise-grade AI suite provides a scalable, compliant foundation for institutions seeking to maximize lifetime customer value, reduce operational friction, and drive sustainable credit growth.

About CreditNirvana

CreditNirvana, a Perfios company, provides AI-driven solutions across the lending lifecycle, helping financial institutions enhance collections, improve operational efficiency and deliver more contextual borrower experiences. Its technology combines AI-led decisioning, automation and analytics to support financial institutions in managing lending and collections workflows. CreditNirvana platform currently touches over $30 billion in Assets Under Management (AUM) across 100+ million loan accounts. For more information, visit creditnirvana.ai.

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/in/news-releases/creditnirvana-launches-indias-first-integrated-ai-suite-for-voice-co-browsing-and-agentic-debt-collections-orchestration-302899564.html

ZURICH, Switzerland, Oct. 6, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Ontinue, a leading MXDR partner providing nonstop managed security operations through its Agentic SOC, today announced the launch of ION for Dark Web Monitoring (DWM), a new managed add-on service that extends ION MXDR to continuously identify exposed credentials, detect brand impersonation attempts, and uncover emerging external threats before attackers can exploit them.

Compromised credentials are traded across criminal forums, lookalike domains are created to impersonate trusted brands, and sensitive information can surface across deep and dark web sources long before security teams become aware of the exposure. Exposed credentials can show up on the dark web within 24 hours. Yet reports have shown that only 19% of organizations continuously monitor for that exposure and automatically remediate it. Most organizations lack the visibility, expertise, and operational processes needed to identify and respond to these risks before they lead to compromise.

ION for Dark Web Monitoring addresses this challenge by combining continuous monitoring across curated threat intelligence sources with the same investigation, automation, and response capabilities that power Ontinue’s managed security operations service. Rather than simply generating alerts, ION for DWM operationalizes external threat intelligence, transforming exposures into investigated incidents and actionable security outcomes.

“The security perimeter no longer ends at the edge of the enterprise,” said Moritz Mann, CEO of Ontinue. “Organizations need visibility into the threats that exist beyond their environment, whether that’s stolen credentials being offered for sale, new brand impersonation campaigns, or emerging signs of attacker activity. Most dark web monitoring solutions stop at detection. ION for Dark Web Monitoring goes further by investigating findings, assessing risk, and helping customers take action before exposures become incidents.”

Turning External Threat Intelligence into Action

ION for Dark Web Monitoring continuously monitors customer-owned domains and brand assets across trusted intelligence sources spanning the clear, deep, and dark web. Findings are validated, enriched, and operationalized through the ION SecOps Platform, enabling customers to leverage the same Cyber Defense Center analysts, automation workflows, and response capabilities already protecting their environments 24/7.

Key capabilities include:

Continuous Monitoring for Exposed Credentials: ION for DWM continuously identifies credentials associated with customer domains that may have been exposed through breaches, criminal marketplaces, or other external sources, helping organizations reduce the likelihood of account compromise and unauthorized access.Detection of Typosquatting and Brand Impersonation: The service detects suspicious domains designed to mimic trusted brands and assesses their potential risk, enabling organizations to identify and disrupt phishing, fraud, and impersonation campaigns earlier.Integrated Investigation and Response: Unlike traditional monitoring tools that generate raw alerts, ION for DWM validates findings, assesses relevance and severity, and operationalizes them through ION MXDR workflows. Approved response actions can be executed automatically or with customer oversight based on predefined rules of engagement.Unified Security Operations: External exposures flow directly into Microsoft Sentinel and the ION SecOps Platform, where they are investigated alongside other security signals using the same automation, detection, and response processes that support Ontinue’s Agentic SOC.

“ION for Dark Web Monitoring expands our visibility beyond our existing tools, giving us better insight into external risks and bringing validated findings into the managed security operations we already trust,” said Jason Burzenski, Vice President, Global Head of Cyber Security at Epiq.

A Managed Approach to Reducing Exposure Risk

Many organizations receive threat intelligence feeds and dark web monitoring alerts but lack the resources to investigate findings, determine relevance, or coordinate response actions. As a result, exposures often remain unresolved until attackers take advantage of them.

ION for Dark Web Monitoring was designed to close that gap by providing a managed service experience rather than another security dashboard. Every finding benefits from expert review, contextual analysis, and operational response, helping security teams focus on reducing risk rather than managing alerts.

“Dark web monitoring has moved from a nice-to-have add-on to a meaningful component of a mature MDR program. Adversaries do not operate in isolation from the organizations they target. Credential exposure, ransomware leak staging, and brand impersonation activity on dark web forums often precede or accompany active intrusions. IDC’s research shows that roughly one in three MDR customers globally still lack dark web monitoring as part of their service, which represents a significant visibility gap at a time when pre-compromise intelligence is increasingly what separates early detection from late discovery. Providers that integrate dark web monitoring with analyst-triaged intelligence and actionable takedown capability, rather than delivering raw feed data, are closing that gap in a way that directly improves security outcomes for their customers.” Yogesh Shivhare, Sr. Research Manager, Security and Trust at IDC. 

Built for Microsoft-Centric Security Operations

Built for Ontinue’s Microsoft-first security operations model, ION for Dark Web Monitoring helps organizations extend visibility beyond their environment without adding another technology platform. Findings, investigations, and response activities become part of a unified security operations workflow, reducing operational complexity while strengthening overall resilience.

ION for Dark Web Monitoring is available immediately as an add-on service for ION MXDR customers.

For more information about Ontinue, visit our Dark Web Monitoring page.

Additional Resource: 

Blog: Beyond the Perimeter: What Security Teams Are MissingWebinar: Ontinue Offers new Dark Web Monitoring service for ION MXDR Customers

About Ontinue

As a leading provider of AI-powered managed security operations, Ontinue is on a mission to give every organization the freedom to focus on what they do best; by making nonstop security excellence accessible, not just aspirational. By combining advanced AI with deep human expertise, Ontinue delivers managed security operations that are tailored to each organization’s unique environment, operational needs, and risk profile.

Ontinue’s ION SecOps Platform integrates AI-driven insights, automation, and real-time collaboration to continuously prevent, detect, and respond to threats. With deep expertise in Microsoft security technologies, Ontinue helps customers maximize the value of their existing investments while achieving stronger, more scalable security outcomes.

Continuous protection. AI-powered Nonstop SecOps. That’s Ontinue.

Media Contact
Alison Raymond
araymond@icrinc.com

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ontinue-expands-external-threat-visibility-with-ion-for-dark-web-monitoring-302898964.html

SOURCE Ontinue

Study uses lessons learned from a school that achieved twice the national average in academic growth in a school year

BOSTON, Oct. 6, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — NWEA, a K-12 assessment and research organization, released today a new research brief that offers a closer look at what it takes to translate strong instructional practices into meaningful improvements for students.

The study, “The Power of Connectedness: A Case for a Coherent Instruction System for Reading and Science Improvement,” examines the instructional practices behind strong academic growth at one elementary school in Texas. During the 2024–25 school year, students at the school achieved nearly twice the national average in academic growth in both reading and science. Researchers found that the school’s success was not driven by a single initiative, but by several interconnected components working together as a coherent instructional system:

Shared instructional vision: provided the foundation for instructional improvement by reducing ambiguity about what strong instruction looks like across classrooms.Aligned professional learning: transforming the instructional vision from a set of expectations into a learnable set of practices, giving teachers regular opportunities to plan, rehearse, and refine lessons together.Regular coaching and feedback: Consistent observations, coaching, and feedback reinforced professional learning and helped close the loop between instructional vision and classroom practice.

“Each of these practices is valuable on its own, but the real power came from how they worked together to accelerate student learning,” said Dr. Susan Kowalski, Lead Research Scientist at NWEA. “None of the individual components is new. What distinguishes this case is the intentional alignment among them: a shared vision for instruction, professional learning tied directly to that vision, and ongoing coaching and feedback, sustained through consistent instructional leadership across levels.”

The school for the study was identified using national MAP Growth data. It serves a high-poverty student population, high percentages of Black and Hispanic students, and many emergent multilingual students, while also experiencing high teacher turnover. Given the exceptional academic growth, the school was a bright spot in the data. NWEA researchers conducted interviews with district and school leaders, as well as teachers, to understand what practices and instructional routines contributed to the school’s outcomes.

The findings are especially relevant for districts working to improve instructional consistency amid staffing challenges, including high teacher turnover and a largely novice or early-career workforce. Rather than relying on individual veteran teachers or stand-alone initiatives, the school built a system designed to continuously strengthen instructional practice across classrooms.

That system was reinforced through a regular cadence of professional learning and coaching. Teachers participated in weekly 90-minute curriculum-based professional learning sessions where they unpacked curriculum content, practiced instructional strategies, anticipated student thinking, and received feedback from peers and leaders before teaching. School leaders also conducted frequent classroom walkthroughs — in some cases as many as 14 in a week — followed by targeted coaching and feedback.

Together, these structures helped create consistency between what teachers were expected to do, how they were supported in doing it, and how their practice was continuously refined.

Given the practical implications of this study, NWEA also released two supplemental guides to support other districts and schools interested in following this example:

Recipe for results: A district leader’s guide to curriculum-based professional learning Teacher’s guide to classroom practices that accelerate reading and science growth 

This study is a follow-up to the 2025 research brief titled “Integrating Literacy and Science: A Powerful Partnership for Student Success,” which explored the connection between literacy and science instruction, documenting the benefits of an integrated instructional approach at the elementary level.

Read the full research brief: https://www.nwea.org/research/publication/the-power-of-connectedness-a-case-for-a-coherent-instructional-system-for-reading-and-science-improvement/ 

About NWEA

NWEA®, a division of HMH, supports educators worldwide by providing responsive, evidence-based assessment solutions that illuminate learning needs and fuel student growth. For more than 40 years, NWEA has developed innovative pre-K–12 assessments, including its flagship assessment – MAP Growth – and professional learning that helps educators strengthen their practice and improve student outcomes. As part of its commitment to bring valuable insights to the education community, NWEA engages in research that examines issues that shed light on inequities and other barriers to academic opportunities. Visit NWEA.org to find out how NWEA partners to help all kids learn.

Contact: Simona Beattie, Communications Director, simona.beattie@nwea.org or 971.361.9526

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-nwea-research-highlights-how-coherent-instructional-systems-can-support-strong-student-growth-302898769.html

SOURCE NWEA