Privacy-preserving Data Research Articles

A prototype-assisted clustered federated learning for big data security and privacy preservation

In the rapidly expanding field of IoT, data production has reached an unprecedented scale, providing valuable insights that accelerate decision-making processes. However, ensuring the privacy and security of this massive amount of data poses significant challenges. In this paper, we propose using clustered federated learning (CFL) as a solution to ensure both the security and privacy of big data by uploading model weights while keeping the data stored locally. Nevertheless, there are practical challenges in applying CFL to big data: (1) the participating FL clients are unlikely to have identical data distributions; (2) insufficient attention is given to the similarity between different clusters; and (3) CFL tends to ignore the class imbalance problem (i.e., long-tailed), which hinders its application in big data and affects the quality of target tasks. To address these issues and enable widespread CFL deployment in big data applications, this paper proposes a prototype-assisted clustered federated learning framework (MDSPFL). It relaxes the assumption of unique data distribution for each client, allowing the client’s local dataset to follow multiple source distributions considering classification class imbalance, thereby aligning with clients in a big data environment. Specifically, MDSPFL employs the proximal update mechanism to handle workload surges caused by mixed distribution and unavailability of similarity between cluster models. Additionally, MDSPFL introduces a class-balanced local training mechanism to resolve the long-tailed problem, which utilizes contrastive learning and class prototypes to enforce a uniform distribution of all classes in the feature space. We conduct extensive experiments on different datasets (EMNIST, Cifar10, Cifar100), and the experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed MDSPFL in big data scenarios with imbalance and mixed-distribution clients.

Federated quantum long short-term memory (FedQLSTM)

Quantum federated learning (QFL) can facilitate collaborative learning across multiple clients using quantum machine learning (QML) models, while preserving data privacy. Although recent advances in QFL span different tasks like classification while leveraging several data types, no prior work has focused on developing a QFL framework that utilizes temporal data to approximate functions useful to analyze the performance of distributed quantum sensing networks. In this paper, a novel QFL framework that is the first to integrate quantum long short-term memory (QLSTM) models with temporal data is proposed. The proposed federated QLSTM (FedQLSTM) framework is exploited for performing the task of function approximation. In this regard, three key use cases are presented: Bessel function approximation, sinusoidal delayed quantum feedback control function approximation, and Struve function approximation. Simulation results confirm that, for all considered use cases, the proposed FedQLSTM framework achieves a faster convergence rate under one local training epoch, minimizing the overall computations, and saving 25–33% of the number of communication rounds needed until convergence compared to an FL framework with classical LSTM models.

Electronic Health Record-Oriented Knowledge Graph System for Collaborative Clinical Decision Support Using Multicenter Fragmented Medical Data: Design and Application Study.

The medical knowledge graph provides explainable decision support, helping clinicians with prompt diagnosis and treatment suggestions. However, in real-world clinical practice, patients visit different hospitals seeking various medical services, resulting in fragmented patient data across hospitals. With data security issues, data fragmentation limits the application of knowledge graphs because single-hospital data cannot provide complete evidence for generating precise decision support and comprehensive explanations. It is important to study new methods for knowledge graph systems to integrate into multicenter, information-sensitive medical environments, using fragmented patient records for decision support while maintaining data privacy and security. This study aims to propose an electronic health record (EHR)-oriented knowledge graph system for collaborative reasoning with multicenter fragmented patient medical data, all the while preserving data privacy. The study introduced an EHR knowledge graph framework and a novel collaborative reasoning process for utilizing multicenter fragmented information. The system was deployed in each hospital and used a unified semantic structure and Observational Medical Outcomes Partnership (OMOP) vocabulary to standardize the local EHR data set. The system transforms local EHR data into semantic formats and performs semantic reasoning to generate intermediate reasoning findings. The generated intermediate findings used hypernym concepts to isolate original medical data. The intermediate findings and hash-encrypted patient identities were synchronized through a blockchain network. The multicenter intermediate findings were collaborated for final reasoning and clinical decision support without gathering original EHR data. The system underwent evaluation through an application study involving the utilization of multicenter fragmented EHR data to alert non-nephrology clinicians about overlooked patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD). The study covered 1185 patients in nonnephrology departments from 3 hospitals. The patients visited at least two of the hospitals. Of these, 124 patients were identified as meeting CKD diagnosis criteria through collaborative reasoning using multicenter EHR data, whereas the data from individual hospitals alone could not facilitate the identification of CKD in these patients. The assessment by clinicians indicated that 78/91 (86%) patients were CKD positive. The proposed system was able to effectively utilize multicenter fragmented EHR data for clinical application. The application study showed the clinical benefits of the system with prompt and comprehensive decision support.

Blockchain-enabled data sharing for IoT: A lightweight, secure and searchable scheme

With the popularity of Internet of Things (IoT) applications, data sharing among IoT devices has become more frequent. Many researchers have proposed fine-grained access control schemes and searchable encryption algorithms to support privacy-preserving data sharing. But there still exist two challenges. First, the existing schemes are computationally intensive, making them unsuitable for resource-limited IoT terminals. Second, they rely on a central server to honestly conduct search operations, making them unable to tackle malicious servers. To this end, we propose a blockchain-enabled data-sharing scheme for IoT that supports lightweight, secure, and searchable data sharing. We design an outsourcing attribute-based encryption algorithm to alleviate the overhead of resource-limited IoT terminals, which reduces the local encryption and decryption to a constant level. Instead of relying on central servers, we leverage smart contract to execute ciphertext retrieval, ensuring the accuracy of search results. Formal security analysis demonstrates that the proposed scheme is chosen-plaintext secure under the DBDH assumption. Experimental simulation shows that it reduces the search time by at least 79.9%, the encryption and decryption complexities to both O(1).

Anomaly detection based on LSTM and autoencoders using federated learning in smart electric grid

In smart electric grid systems, various sensors and Internet of Things (IoT) devices are used to collect electrical data at substations. In a traditional system, a multitude of energy-related data from substations needs to be migrated to central storage, such as Cloud or edge devices, for knowledge extraction that might impose severe data misuse, data manipulation, or privacy leakage. This motivates to propose anomaly detection system to detect threats and Federated Learning to resolve the issues of data silos and privacy of data. In this article, we present a framework to identify anomalies in industrial data that are gathered from the remote terminal devices deployed at the substations in the smart electric grid system. The anomaly detection system is based on Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) and autoencoders that employs Mean Standard Deviation (MSD) and Median Absolute Deviation (MAD) approaches for detecting anomalies. We deploy Federated Learning (FL) to preserve the privacy of the data generated by the substations. FL enables energy providers to train shared AI models cooperatively without disclosing the data to the server. In order to further enhance the security and privacy properties of the proposed framework, we implemented homomorphic encryption based on the Paillier algorithm for preserving data privacy. The proposed security model performs better with MSD approach using HE-128 bit key providing 97% F1-score and 98% accuracy for K=5 with low computation overhead as compared with HE-256 bit key.

A privacy-preserving data aggregation system based on blockchain in VANET

In the realm of vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs), data aggregation plays a pivotal role in bringing together data from multiple vehicles for further processing and sharing. Erroneous data feedback can significantly impact vehicle operations, control, and overall safety, necessitating the assurance of security in vehicular data aggregation. Addressing the security risks and challenges inherent in data aggregation within VANETs, this paper introduces a blockchain-based scheme for secure and anonymous data aggregation. The proposed scheme integrates cloud computing with blockchain technology, presenting a novel blockchain-based data aggregation system that robustly supports efficient and secure data collection in VANETs. Leveraging key escrow resilience mechanisms, the solution ensures the security of system keys, preventing the security problems caused by keys generated by third parties alone in the past. Furthermore, through secondary data aggregation, fine-grained data aggregation is achieved, providing effective support for cloud services in VANETs. The effectiveness of the proposed scheme is confirmed through security analysis and performance evaluations, demonstrating superior computational and communication efficiency compared existing alternatives.

ANALYSIS OF HOW AND WHY STYLISTIC LANGUAGE IMPACTS ADVERTISING WITH A JOURNALISTIC APPROACH

Objective and Background: The Internet of Things (IoT) devices store a great volume of data. Therefore, with the advancements in technology, some new protection guidelines have to be developed to preserve data privacy and collection. The present study aimed to determine a secure protective framework using the BTD structure in a specified zone, and provide the idea of hiding the sensory data of an operator device to preserve data privacy without losing the data integrity. Methodology: Two simple and enhanced methods were used. The BTD framework and estimated ground truth were used in both modes. The enhanced method allows the users to use a random weight (variance) when combining their sensory data with the estimated ground truth provided by the agent. We ran the BTD framework in the CloudSim (network simulation framework). Each simulation is run for 500 virtual minutes with 12 iterations. The target zone is set to 50×50 meters. The test results were collected on real-world data traces from sensory systems. In addition to the BTD structure, the Voting method has been also used, and to do so, majority voting and CRH truth discovery method (Conflict Resolution on Heterogeneous Data) which does not take any measures to break the security of the sensor during the process is used. Findings: The comparative results show a 0.70-0.71 error level between the BTD and other functions, at least. As long as there is at least one reliable source, the BTD will have an error level of 0. Simulations show that BTD has a worst-case error of 0.05 and a weighted variance of +/- 5%. Based on previous frameworks, the BTD is improved by three requirements of a population identified in the IoT: Preservation of privacy for the device user, data integrity for the data collection group, and low-cost computation on the user device.

A Federated Learning Framework for Brain Tumor Segmentation Without Sharing Patient Data

ABSTRACTBrain tumors pose a significant threat to human health, necessitating early detection and accurate diagnosis to enhance treatment outcomes. However, centralized data collection and processing encounter challenges related to privacy breaches and data integration due to the sensitivity and diversity of brain tumor patient data. In response, this paper proposes an innovative federated learning‐based approach for brain tumor detection, facilitating multicenter data sharing while safeguarding individual data privacy. Our proposed federated learning architecture features each medical center as a participant, with each retaining local data and engaging in secure communication with a central server. Within this federated migration learning framework, each medical center independently trains a base model on its local data and transmits a fraction of the model's parameters to the central server. The central server leverages these parameters for model aggregation and knowledge sharing, facilitating the exchange and migration of models among participating medical centers. This collaborative approach empowers individual medical centers to share knowledge and experiences, thereby enhancing the performance and accuracy of the brain tumor detection model. To validate our federated learning model, we conduct comprehensive evaluations using an independent test dataset, comparing its performance with traditional centralized learning approaches. The experimental results underscore the superiority of the federated learning‐based brain tumor detection approach, achieving heightened detection performance compared with traditional methods while meticulously preserving data privacy. In conclusion, our study presents an innovative solution for effective data collaboration and privacy protection in the realm of brain tumor detection, holding promising clinical applications. The federated learning approach not only advances detection accuracy but also establishes a secure and privacy‐preserving foundation for collaborative research in medical imaging.

Smart Contract Assisted Privacy-Preserving Data Aggregation and Management Scheme for Smart Grid

Smart Contract Assisted Privacy-Preserving Data Aggregation and Management Scheme for Smart Grid

Data Protection: Privacy-Preserving Data Collection With Validation

Data Protection: Privacy-Preserving Data Collection With Validation

Privacy-Preserved Data Trading Via Verifiable Data Disturbance

Privacy-Preserved Data Trading Via Verifiable Data Disturbance

Hierarchical adaptive evolution framework for privacy-preserving data publishing

The growing need for data publication and the escalating concerns regarding data privacy have led to a surge in interest in Privacy-Preserving Data Publishing (PPDP) across research, industry, and government sectors. Despite its significance, PPDP remains a challenging NP-hard problem, particularly when dealing with complex datasets, often rendering traditional traversal search methods inefficient. Evolutionary Algorithms (EAs) have emerged as a promising approach in response to this challenge, but their effectiveness, efficiency, and robustness in PPDP applications still need to be improved. This paper presents a novel Hierarchical Adaptive Evolution Framework (HAEF) that aims to optimize t-closeness anonymization through attribute generalization and record suppression using Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Differential Evolution (DE). To balance GA and DE, the first hierarchy of HAEF employs a GA-prioritized adaptive strategy enhancing exploration search. This combination aims to strike a balance between exploration and exploitation. The second hierarchy employs a random-prioritized adaptive strategy to select distinct mutation strategies, thus leveraging the advantages of various mutation strategies. Performance bencmark tests demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed technique. In 16 test instances, HAEF significantly outperforms traditional depth-first traversal search and exceeds the performance of previous state-of-the-art EAs on most datasets. In terms of overall performance, under the three privacy constraints tested, HAEF outperforms the conventional DFS search by an average of 47.78%, the state-of-the-art GA-based ID-DGA method by an average of 37.38%, and the hybrid GA-DE method by an average of 8.35% in TLEF. Furthermore, ablation experiments confirm the effectiveness of the various strategies within the framework. These findings enhance the efficiency of the data publishing process, ensuring privacy and security and maximizing data availability.

BIG DATA PRIVACY IN BIOMEDICAL RESERACH

Abstract: With the exponential growth of biomedical data, the potential for transformative discoveries in healthcare is immense. However, the utilization of such vast datasets raises significant concerns regarding data privacy and security. This project proposes a Java-based solution aimed at preserving privacy while enabling robust analysis of big biomedical datasets. The primary objective of this project is to develop a framework that facilitates secure and privacy-preserving data analysis in biomedical research. The framework employs advanced cryptographic techniques and secure multi-party computation protocols to ensure that sensitive patient information remains confidential throughout the analysis process To demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed solution, a prototype system will be developed and evaluated using real-world biomedical datasets. Performance metrics such as computational overhead, data transmission latency, and scalability will be assessed to validate the feasibility and effectiveness of the framework. In conclusion, this project aims to address the pressing need for privacy-preserving big data analysis in biomedical research, thereby facilitating responsible data sharing and advancing scientific discovery while safeguarding individual privacy rights. Keywords– Big data privacy, biomedical search, java project, privacy preserving techniques,HIPAA, GDPR.

A multifaceted survey on privacy preservation of federated learning: progress, challenges, and opportunities

Federated learning (FL) refers to a system of training and stabilizing local machine learning models at the global level by aggregating the learning gradients of the models. It reduces the concern of sharing the private data of participating entities for statistical analysis to be carried out at the server. It allows participating entities called clients or users to infer useful information from their raw data. As a consequence, the need to share their confidential information with any other entity or the central entity called server is eliminated. FL can be clearly interpreted as a privacy-preserving version of traditional machine learning and deep learning algorithms. However, despite this being an efficient distributed training scheme, the client’s sensitive information can still be exposed to various security threats from the shared parameters. Since data has always been a major priority for any user or organization, this article is primarily concerned with discussing the significant problems and issues relevant to the preservation of data privacy and the viability and feasibility of several proposed solutions in the FL context. In this work, we conduct a detailed study on FL, the categorization of FL, the challenges of FL, and various attacks that can be executed to disclose the users’ sensitive data used during learning. In this survey, we review and compare different privacy solutions for FL to prevent data leakage and discuss secret sharing (SS)-based security solutions for FL proposed by various researchers in concise form. We also briefly discuss quantum federated learning (QFL) and privacy-preservation techniques in QFL. In addition to these, a comparison and contrast of several survey works on FL is included in this work. We highlight the major applications based on FL. We discuss certain future directions pertaining to the open issues in the field of FL and finally conclude our work.

Responsible AI for cardiovascular disease detection: Towards a privacy-preserving and interpretable model

Background and objectiveCardiovascular disease (CD) is a major global health concern, affecting millions with symptoms like fatigue and chest discomfort. Timely identification is crucial due to its significant contribution to global mortality. In healthcare, artificial intelligence (AI) holds promise for advancing disease risk assessment and treatment outcome prediction. However, machine learning (ML) evolution raises concerns about data privacy and biases, especially in sensitive healthcare applications. The objective is to develop and implement a responsible AI model for CD prediction that prioritize patient privacy, security, ensuring transparency, explainability, fairness, and ethical adherence in healthcare applications. MethodsTo predict CD while prioritizing patient privacy, our study employed data anonymization involved adding Laplace noise to sensitive features like age and gender. The anonymized dataset underwent analysis using a differential privacy (DP) framework to preserve data privacy. DP ensured confidentiality while extracting insights. Compared with Logistic Regression (LR), Gaussian Naïve Bayes (GNB), and Random Forest (RF), the methodology integrated feature selection, statistical analysis, and SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP) and Local Interpretable Model-agnostic Explanations (LIME) for interpretability. This approach facilitates transparent and interpretable AI decision-making, aligning with responsible AI development principles. Overall, it combines privacy preservation, interpretability, and ethical considerations for accurate CD predictions. ResultsOur investigations from the DP framework with LR were promising, with an area under curve (AUC) of 0.848 ± 0.03, an accuracy of 0.797 ± 0.02, precision at 0.789 ± 0.02, recall at 0.797 ± 0.02, and an F1 score of 0.787 ± 0.02, with a comparable performance with the non-privacy framework. The SHAP and LIME based results support clinical findings, show a commitment to transparent and interpretable AI decision-making, and aligns with the principles of responsible AI development. ConclusionsOur study endorses a novel approach in predicting CD, amalgamating data anonymization, privacy-preserving methods, interpretability tools SHAP, LIME, and ethical considerations. This responsible AI framework ensures accurate predictions, privacy preservation, and user trust, underscoring the significance of comprehensive and transparent ML models in healthcare. Therefore, this research empowers the ability to forecast CD, providing a vital lifeline to millions of CD patients globally and potentially preventing numerous fatalities.

New approach for efficient malicious multiparty private set intersection

The Multiparty Private Set Intersection (MPSI) protocol allows untrusted parties to compute the intersection of their sets without revealing any additional information. MPSI has found wide applications in fields such as advertising, vertical federated learning, privacy-preserving data mining, and private contact tracing. However, existing MPSI solutions face challenges in terms of security and efficiency. Some MPSI schemes are secure only against semi-honest adversaries and cannot effectively defend against malicious adversaries. Other schemes, while capable of withstanding malicious adversaries, exhibit efficiency problems, especially as the number of corrupt participants increases. A practical MPSI solution must maintain high security and efficiency, even when handling large-scale data and a majority of corrupted participants.This paper introduces a novel MPSI scheme named TH-PSI, built upon a new star-shaped topological network communication framework based on the trusted execution environment. TH-PSI has been rigorously proven to be secure within the standard Universal Composability framework, capable of thwarting malicious adversaries. To demonstrate the efficiency of TH-PSI, we conduct a comprehensive series of experiments. We implement the TH-PSI scheme and tested it in both LAN and WAN settings, involving up to 30 participants and datasets as large as 222. We compare TH-PSI with state-of-the-art MPSI schemes, ENOC21 and NTY21, with a specific focus on their efficiency in the presence of malicious adversaries. Our experiments show that TH-PSI is an efficient solution capable of delivering results within a matter of seconds, even when dealing with data at the million-level and a majority of corrupted participants.

Cluster-based anonymity model and algorithm for 1:1 dataset with a single sensitive attribute using machine learning technique

Privacy is a significant issue that requires consideration in all applications. Data collected from various individuals and organizations must be disclosed to the public or private parties for analysis and research purposes. The collected data are studied and analyzed digitally for the extraction of various useful patterns for decision-making research purposes. Privacy-preserving data publishing is significant as privacy violations in the patient’s data may have an adverse effect on the individual positive reputation. An efficient Cluster Based anonymity model has been proposed to anonymizes the 1:1 dataset with a single sensitive attribute through the introduction of a concept named “Semi-sensitive attribute.” Based on correlation, the attributes are categorized as quasi-identifier and semi-sensitive attributes. The k-anonymity is implemented on the quasi-identifier with the semi-sensitive attribute table and Fuzzy c-means clustering has been implemented to fix a range of values for anonymizing the semi-sensitive attributes. The disease is considered a sensitive attribute as the research work focuses on the medical dataset. The proposed model is demonstrated to resist the three privacy attacks such as, i)Identity Disclosure, ii) Attribute Disclosure, and iii) Membership Disclosure. The utility loss is calculated for each row and utility loss of each record are aggregated and considered as the total information loss for each attribute. Cluster Based anonymity model measured the utility loss for all the attributes and the average utility loss for the anonymized patient dataset is 3.78%.

Wireless federated learning for PR identification and analysis based on generalized information

This paper introduces a novel approach to personal risk (PR) identification using federated learning (FL) in wireless communication scenarios, leveraging generalized information. The primary focus is on harnessing the power of distributed data across various wireless devices while ensuring data privacy and security, a critical concern in PR assessment. To this end, we propose an FL-based model that effectively aggregates learning from diverse, decentralized data sources to analyze the PR factors. The proposed method involves training local models on individual devices, which are then aggregated to form a comprehensive global model. This process not only preserves data privacy by keeping sensitive information on the device but also utilizes the widespread availability and connectivity of wireless devices to enhance data richness and model robustness. To address the challenges posed by the wireless environment, such as data heterogeneity and communication constraints, we further implement advanced aggregation algorithms and optimization techniques tailored to these unique conditions. We finally evaluate the performance of our proposed method based on two primary metrics of identification accuracy and convergence rate of the federated learning process. Through extensive simulations and real-world experiments, we demonstrate that our approach not only achieves high accuracy in PR identification but also ensures rapid convergence, making it a viable solution for real-time risk assessment in wireless networks.

Scalability and Robustness of Federated Learning Systems: Challenges and Solutions

Federated Learning (FL) revolutionizes traditional machine learning paradigms by enabling collaborative model training across decentralized devices while preserving data privacy. However, its scalability and robustness remain formidable challenges. This paper delves into the complexities of scaling FL systems and enhancing their resilience in dynamic environments. We analyze scalability hurdles stemming from communication overhead, resource constraints, and diverse client populations. Additionally, we scrutinize robustness challenges posed by non-IID data distributions, heterogeneity, and adversarial threats. Proposing novel solutions, including communication-efficient aggregation techniques, adaptive client sampling strategies, and robust aggregation mechanisms, we aim to advance the scalability and robustness of FL systems. Empirical evaluations and case studies underscore the efficacy of these solutions across various applications. Our work outlines future research directions, emphasizing standardization efforts and ethical considerations, to propel the adoption of FL in real-world scenarios.. Keywords: Keywords: Federated Learning, Scalability, Robustness, Privacy Preservation, Communication Efficiency, Heterogeneity, Adversarial Attacks, Differential Privacy.

Gradient Matching Federated Domain Adaptation for Brain Image Classification.

Federated learning has shown its unique advantages in many different tasks, including brain image analysis. It provides a new way to train deep learning models while protecting the privacy of medical image data from multiple sites. However, previous studies suggest that domain shift across different sites may influence the performance of federated models. As a solution, we propose a gradient matching federated domain adaptation (GM-FedDA) method for brain image classification, aiming to reduce domain discrepancy with the assistance of a public image dataset and train robust local federated models for target sites. It mainly includes two stages: 1) pretraining stage; we propose a one-common-source adversarial domain adaptation (OCS-ADA) strategy, i.e., adopting ADA with gradient matching loss to pretrain encoders for reducing domain shift at each target site (private data) with the assistance of a common source domain (public data) and 2) fine-tuning stage; we develop a gradient matching federated (GM-Fed) fine-tuning method for updating local federated models pretrained with the OCS-ADA strategy, i.e., pushing the optimization direction of a local federated model toward its specific local minimum by minimizing gradient matching loss between sites. Using fully connected networks as local models, we validate our method with the diagnostic classification tasks of schizophrenia and major depressive disorder based on multisite resting-state functional MRI (fMRI), respectively. Results show that the proposed GM-FedDA method outperforms other commonly used methods, suggesting the potential of our method in brain imaging analysis and other fields, which need to utilize multisite data while preserving data privacy.