Differentially Private Federated Learning: A Systematic Review

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Authors: Jie Fu, Yuan Hong, Xinpeng Ling, Leixia Wang, Xun Ran, Zhiyu Sun, Hui Wang, Zhili Chen, Yang Cao
Cited by: 13
References: 41

Abstract

In recent years, privacy and security concerns in machine learning have promoted trusted federated learning to the forefront of research. Differential privacy has emerged as the de facto standard for privacy protection in federated learning due to its rigorous mathematical foundation and provable guarantee. Despite extensive research on algorithms that incorporate differential privacy within federated learning, there remains an evident deficiency in systematic reviews that categorize and synthesize these studies. Our work presents a systematic overview of the differentially private federated learning. Existing taxonomies have not adequately considered objects and level of privacy protection provided by various differential privacy models in federated learning. To rectify this gap, we propose a new taxonomy of differentially private federated learning based on definition and guarantee of various differential privacy models and federated scenarios. Our classification allows for a clear delineation of the protected objects across various differential privacy models and their respective neighborhood levels within federated learning environments. Furthermore, we explore the applications of differential privacy in federated learning scenarios. Our work provide valuable insights into privacy-preserving federated learning and suggest practical directions for future research.

Fields of Study & Subjects

Privacy-Preserving Technologies in Data Cryptography and Data Security Stochastic Gradient Optimization Techniques

Publication details

Journal / source
ACM Computing Surveys
Publisher
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
Volume
58
Issue
11
Pages
1–38
Publication date
16 March 2026
Language
EN