Adaptive Protection broken in M365 Academic tenants (M365 A5 user)?

Dean Murray 10 Reputation points
2025-12-19T17:59:36.39+00:00

It appears that there is a bug in Insider Risk Management within academic tenants using Microsoft 365 A5 licenses.

  1. When a user with an assigned M365 A5 license tries to access the Adaptive Protection blade within the Purview Insider Risk Management solution, a message is displayed that states "To use Adaptive Protection, your organization is required to have a Compliance E5 or M365 E5 license."
  2. The user has required permissions as a Global Admin and has Purview Insider Risk Management permissions assigned. The user can use all other features and functions within Insider Risk Management.
  3. Microsoft's documentations states that Insider Risk Management and Adaptive Protection features are available for M365 E5 and M365 A5 users.
  4. My commercial tenant with an M365 E5 license assigned works without a problem and displays additional Adaptive Protection features within this IRM Adaptive Protection blade.
  5. The M365 A5 user can create Adaptive Scopes within Settings -> Roles and Scopes - Adaptive Scopes without a problem.

My best guess is that in a recent code update, a developer forgot to include additional SKU GUIDs for M365 A5 when blocking users that are M365 E3/A3 and below for this feature. Where can this issue be submitted as a DCR?

Thanks...Dean Murray

Microsoft Security | Microsoft Defender | Other

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  1. AI answer

    2025-12-19T17:59:46.29+00:00

    It seems that there may be an issue with the Adaptive Protection feature in Microsoft 365 A5 academic tenants, as you described. According to Microsoft's documentation, Adaptive Protection is indeed available for both M365 E5 and M365 A5 users. However, the error message indicating that a Compliance E5 or M365 E5 license is required suggests that there might be a misconfiguration or bug affecting access for A5 users in academic settings.

    Since you mentioned that users with M365 E5 licenses in commercial tenants do not experience this issue, it further supports the idea that this could be a specific problem with academic tenant configurations.

    For submitting this issue as a DCR (Design Change Request), you would typically need to contact Microsoft support directly or use the feedback mechanisms available within the Microsoft 365 admin center. They can provide guidance on how to formally report this issue for further investigation.

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