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Differentially Private Federated Learning: A Systematic Review

Jie Fu, Yuan Hong, Xinpeng Ling, Leixia Wang, Xun Ran, Zhiyu Sun, Wendy Hui Wang, Zhili Chen et al.

ACM Computing Surveys, 2026

18 citations

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.

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Evidence Hub reads this as a systematic review. Its evidence level is 1 of 5 (Highest · pooled evidence). Pooled evidence from several studies sits at the top of the evidence pyramid.

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