Federated Learning & Distributed Databases – Enhancing Data Privacy

Federated Learning (FL) is a recently proposed machine learning scheme for decentralized training across distributed devices with enhanced data privacy. FL is known to provide a solution in cloud environments to overcome the privacy concerns arising out of centralized data collection. In this study, we investigate Federated Learning in cloud-based system, in particular, cognitive regarding its capability to secure data privacy, scalability and impact on model training by AI. Then, results were obtained in experiments to evaluate how FL performs, in terms of model accuracy and communication overhead, and in how scalable it is using publicly available datasets. Results of time to completion and accuracy across Federated Learning and centralized learning systems indicate that while there is a loss in accuracy from non IID data distribution, Federated Learning also exhibits advantages regarding scale (scaling order) and privacy. Communication costs increased due to need for frequent updates across distributed devices, but gradient compression was found to mitigate this challenge. Focusing on the trade-offs between Federated and centralized learning systems, this research provides important hints for future studies on privacy preserving AI in cloud environments.

Internet of Things (IoT) systems are rightly receiving considerable interest for many real-world applications, from in-body networks to satellite networks. Such a massive-scale system generates a considerable amount of traffic data, making IoT systems a distributed data source generator. For many reasons, such as the functionality of IoT applications and Quality of Service (QoS) provisioning, classifying these traffic data is of high importance. In the last few years, widespread interest has been expressed in applying Machine Learning (ML)-based techniques for Network Traffic Classification (NTC) tasks. However, the traditional centralized learning-based traffic classifiers pose serious challenges, especially in IoT networks. The centralized ML techniques call for collecting a large amount of data from various IoT devices, which in turn introduces data governance and privacy challenges. Furthermore, in the centralized ML, training data need to be transferred to the Cloud, which increases communication cost and latency. To address these problems, we propose Federated Learning (FL) Internet of Things (IoT) Traffic Classifier (FLITC)-a Federated Learning (FL)-based IoT traffic classification method which is based on the Multi-Layer Perception (MLP) neural network and holds the local data unimpaired on IoT devices by sending only the learned parameters to the aggregation server. Our experimental results show that the FLITC beats centralized learning in preserving the privacy of sensitive data and offers a better degree of accuracy at the cost of a longer training time.

Federated Learning (FL) is a paradigm in distributed machine learning, which has gained significant attention in the recent years especially in the domain of Internet of Things. Federated Learning saves communication bandwidth when compared to centralized machine learning process and is also considered to be privacy preserving as the raw data at the clients need not be transmitted to the server for the FL learning. Recent studies on FL have exposed privacy vulnerabilities particularly in the form of Gradient Leakage Attacks (GLA) in which the adversaries can generate training data of the client from shared gradients or model updates from clients. The available solutions in the literature for GLA based on perturbing the gradients from clients leads to a drop in the performance of the FL system while attempting to preserve privacy. We propose HAFedL, an improved novel hessian aware adaptive privacy preserving FL scheme in which the performance of the model is not significantly affected due to the aspects introduced in the FL architecture to improve the privacy of the model against the GLA. The HAFedL is also robust to the data heterogeneity and device heterogeneity (particularly straggler effect) which may be present in the clients participating in the FL. The performance of HAFedL is tested for two applications- IoT device identification and digit classification. The proposed HAFedL scheme can be utilized in privacy sensitive domains such as smart city applications, Industrial Internet of Things, Internet of Robotic Things, Internet of Medical Things, etc.

The Internet of Things (IoT) has become a foundational element of the digital infrastructure, extending its connectivity across various sectors and embedding intelligence in everyday devices. This article introduces SecureNet, a pioneering approach that integrates Machine Learning (ML), Blockchain, and Federated Learning (FL) to enhance IoT security. To navigate this challenging train, an innovative framework that synergizes Machine Learning (ML), Blockchain technology, and Federated Learning (FL) to fortify IoT security. SecureNet is architected to deliver a robust defense mechanism for IoT ecosystems, providing resilience against increasingly sophisticated cyber threats, and ensuring the preservation of data integrity, privacy, and unwavering system reliability. This study explores the application of advanced ML techniques NSL-KDD dataset, implementing two highly effective classifiers: Random Forest and Logistic Regression. The Random Forest classifier exhibited an exceptional accuracy of 99.85%, while the Logistic Regression model demonstrated a near-perfect accuracy of 99.03%. These compelling results highlight the efficacy of ML in identifying and mitigating activities within network traffic. SecureNet leverages ML’s profound analytical capabilities for intelligent threat discernment, Blockchain’s immutable ledgers for unassailable data verification, and FL’s privacy-centric approach to distribute model training. These outcomes underscore the potential of ML models to enhance IoT security by accurately identifying malicious patterns and anomalies within network traffic.

The exponentially growing Internet of Things (IoT) devices produce gigantic amounts of data every day. To process this ample IoT data, traditional centralized processing methods are mostly used, which face significant latency, bandwidth, and privacy challenges. Federated Learning (FL), a distributed machine learning (ML) technique, has become a promising solution to address these challenges by integrating edge computing environments. Federated edge intelligence can improve model accuracy and data privacy, and reduce latency and bandwidth. This approach allows IoT networks to train ML models collaboratively without centralizing data. This improves efficiency and preserves privacy and security. This chapter presents the fundamentals of FL, its architectural aspects, and demonstrates how it helps to further improve edge intelligence in IoT environments. We also discuss how edge devices can learn and train models with the use of the FL method. Furthermore, we provide examples of practical application use case scenarios, showcasing how this framework enhances real-time decision-making capabilities even while addressing data privacy. Finally, our research aims to guide future scholars through identifying the challenges this architecture currently faces and the future research directions associated with FL-based edge intelligence for IoT.

Federated learning (FL) is widely used because it is effective at enhancing data privacy. However, there will be many problems in the FL training process, such as poor performance of training models and the model converging too slowly, as the data is typically heterogeneous and the computing capabilities of the participants device are different. Here, we proposed an optimized FL model paradigm, that applies model arithmetic prediction to prevent the training process's inefficiency due to the participants' limited computational resources. The proposed formula for participant selection is based on posterior probabilities and correlation coefficients, which have been validated to reduce data noise and enhance the effect of central model aggregation. In addition, high-quality participant models are selected based on posterior probability, combined with correlation coefficients, which allows the server model to aggregate as many better-performing participant models as possible, meanwhile avoiding the impact of participants with too much data noise. During the aggregation step, the model loss values and the participant training delay are used to weight factors for participant devices, which accelerates FL convergence and improves model performance. Data heterogeneity and non-IID are fully taken into consideration in the method we proposed. Finally, these results have been verified by extensive experimental, we demonstrate better performance in the presence of non-IID data, especially affective computing. Compared with previous research, reduces training latency by 4 seconds, and the model accuracy is increased by 10% on average.

Recent medical applications are largely dominated by the application of Machine Learning (ML) models to assist expert decisions, leading to disruptive innovations in radiology, pathology, genomics, and hence modern healthcare systems in general. Despite the profitable usage of AI-based algorithms, these data-driven methods are facing issues such as the scarcity and privacy of user data, as well as the difficulty of institutions exchanging medical information. With insufficient data, ML is prevented from reaching its full potential, which is only possible if the database consists of the full spectrum of possible anatomies, pathologies, and input data types. To solve these issues, Federated Learning (FL) appeared as a valuable approach in the medical field, allowing patient data to stay where it is generated. Since an FL setting allows many clients to collaboratively train a model while keeping training data decentralized, it can protect privacy-sensitive medical data. However, FL is still unable to deliver all its promises and meets the more stringent requirements (e.g., latency, security) of a healthcare system based on multiple Internet of Medical Things (IoMT). For example, although no data are shared among the participants by definition in FL systems, some security risks are still present and can be considered as vulnerabilities from multiple aspects. This paper sheds light upon the emerging deployment of FL, provides a broad overview of current approaches and existing challenges, and outlines several directions of future work that are relevant to solving existing problems in federated healthcare, with a particular focus on security and privacy issues.

Federated Learning is a revolutionary approach to machine learning. Its purpose is to enable multiple participants to collaboratively train machine learning models without the need to share local data. The main objective is to address issues related to data privacy and security. In traditional machine learning, data is typically centralized and stored in a single location or on cloud servers for training. However, this centralized training approach carries risks of potential data leakage, especially concerning sensitive and critical information. Industries such as healthcare and finance, which involve sensitive data, place a premium on safeguarding data privacy. Furthermore, in cases where data cannot be easily transferred or is subject to privacy regulations, centralized methods may face limitations. Federated Learning revolutionizes the conventional approach by introducing a decentralized model training process. It maintains data decentralization while achieving collaborative model optimization, greatly enhancing data privacy and security. The MOON algorithm, an integral part of federated learning, contributes to its novelty. As a significant component, the MOON algorithm facilitates new possibilities for federated learning. In this article, the research will elaborate on the MOON algorithm within the context of federated learning. And this article will delve into its description and optimization, elucidating how it enhances federated learning.

This article provides a comprehensive survey of aggregation strategies in federated learning (FL). This decentralized machine learning (ML) paradigm enables multiple clients to collaboratively train models without sharing their local datasets. Aggregation is a pivotal aspect of FL, as it integrates model updates from diverse clients into a unified global model while addressing critical challenges such as data heterogeneity, scalability, and privacy preservation. The study categorizes aggregation strategies into three primary approaches: data-centric, model-centric, and secure aggregation, each tailored to address distinct problems in FL systems. Data-centric strategies focus on addressing non-independent and identically distributed (non-IID) data across clients, ensuring that model updates account for imbalances in data distributions. Model-centric strategies optimize the aggregation of model parameters, emphasizing techniques such as weighted averaging and model distillation to improve model performance across clients with diverse data characteristics. Secure aggregation techniques aim to enhance privacy and robustness, protecting client data from potential adversarial threats through encryption-based methods like secure multi-party computation (SMPC) and Byzantine-resilient techniques. The analysis delves into the advantages and limitations of these aggregation strategies, particularly their role in tackling challenges like non-IID data, communication efficiency, and resistance to adversarial attacks. Furthermore, the article identifies existing research gaps in FL, including the need for more scalable and robust aggregation methods capable of reducing communication costs, enhancing privacy guarantees, and improving performance in highly heterogeneous environments. These insights provide a roadmap for future research aimed at advancing aggregation strategies in FL to improve model accuracy, security, and efficiency in real-world applications.

The Internet of Things (IoT) realized exponential growth of smart devices with decent capabilities, promising an era of Edge Intelligence. This paradigm creates a timely need to shift many computations closer to the data source at the network's edge. Data privacy is paramount, as security breaches can severely impact such an environment with its vast attack surface. The advent of Federated learning (FL), a privacy-by-design with decentralized machine learning (ML), enables participants to collaboratively train a model without sharing their sensitive data. Nevertheless, privacy implications are a glaring concern and perrier for widening the utilization of FL approaches and their mass adoption over IoT applications. This paper introduces the notion of FL over the Internet of Disconnected Things (FLIoDT), a functionality separation of concerns following the air-gapped networks. FLIoDT provides a practical methodology to mitigate Data threats/attacks in the FL domain. FLIoDT proves a practical architectural approach to mitigate several attacks in an Edge environment. Data dredging and adversarial attacks, like data poisoning, to name some. This study investigates human activity recognition of health monitoring patient data over edge computing to validate FLIoDT.

Machine learning (ML) and Deep learning (DL) models are popular in many areas, from business, medicine, industries, healthcare, transportation, smart cities, and many more. However, the conventional centralized training techniques may not apply to upcoming distributed applications, which require high accuracy and quick response time. It is mainly due to limited storage and performance bottleneck problems on the centralized servers during the execution of various ML and DL-based models. However, federated learning (FL) is a developing approach to training ML models in a collaborative and distributed manner. It allows the full potential exploitation of these models with unlimited data and distributed computing power. In FL, edge computing devices collaborate to train a global model on their private data and computational power without sharing their private data on the network, thereby offering privacy preservation by default. But the distributed nature of FL faces various challenges related to data heterogeneity, client mobility, scalability, and seamless data aggregation. Moreover, the communication channels, clients, and central servers are also vulnerable to attacks which may give various security threats. Thus, a structured vulnerability and risk assessment are needed to deploy FL successfully in real-life scenarios. Furthermore, the scope of FL is expanding in terms of its application areas, with each area facing different threats. In this paper, we analyze various vulnerabilities present in the FL environment and design a literature survey of possible threats from the perspective of different application areas. Also, we review the most recent defensive algorithms and strategies used to guard against security and privacy threats in those areas. For a systematic coverage of the topic, we considered various applications under four main categories: space, air, ground, and underwater communications. We also compared the proposed methodologies regarding the underlying approach, base model, datasets, evaluation matrices, and achievements. Lastly, various approaches’ future directions and existing drawbacks are discussed in detail.

This research article is an effort to explore the intriguing fact about the Indian With the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) technology, we are seeing an explosion of data being transmitted during model training, which unfortunately raises the risk of data leakage. In an age where data privacy is paramount and regulations are becoming increasingly strict, protecting sensitive information from unauthorized access has become a pressing issue. This is where Federated Learning (FL) steps in as a promising solution, finding its way into various sectors. In this paper, we will explore the practical applications of FL in five crucial areas: healthcare, urban transportation, computer vision, the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), and 5G networks. We will assess how FL can be effectively implemented in these real-world scenarios to enhance privacy while ensuring model accuracy and efficiency. Additionally, we will compare the FL framework with traditional centralized methods, showcasing how FL improves data privacy and performance, as well as acknowledging some of its current limitations. We will also discuss potential future enhancements that could make FL even more effective. Lastly, we will take a look at the latest research trends and the developmental prospects within this exciting field, providing insight into how FL could shape the future of data protection and AI.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has, in the recent past, experienced a rebirth with the growth of generative AI systems such as ChatGPT and Bard. These systems are trained with billions of parameters and have enabled widespread accessibility and understanding of AI among different user groups. Widespread adoption of AI has led to the need for understanding how machine learning (ML) models operate to build trust in them. An understanding of how these models generate their results remains a huge challenge that explainable AI seeks to solve. Federated learning (FL) grew out of the need to have privacy-preserving AI by having ML models that are decentralized but still share model parameters with a global model. This study sought to examine the extent of development of the explainable AI field within the FL environment in relation to the main contributions made, the types of FL, the sectors it is applied to, the models used, the methods applied by each study, and the databases from which sources are obtained. A systematic search in 8 electronic databases, namely, Web of Science Core Collection, Scopus, PubMed, ACM Digital Library, IEEE Xplore, Mendeley, BASE, and Google Scholar, was undertaken. A review of 26 studies revealed that research on explainable FL is steadily growing despite being concentrated in Europe and Asia. The key determinants of FL use were data privacy and limited training data. Horizontal FL remains the preferred approach for federated ML, whereas post hoc explainability techniques were preferred. There is potential for development of novel approaches and improvement of existing approaches in the explainable FL field, especially for critical areas. OSF Registries 10.17605/OSF.IO/Y85WA; https://osf.io/y85wa.

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