Privacy-Enhanced Federated Learning Model for Secure Internet of Things Applications: A Systematic Review

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.26740/vubeta.v3i3.46474

Keywords:

Edge Intelligence, Cybersecurity, Privacy Enhancing, Internet of Things, Federated Learning

Abstract

The rapid growth of Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystems has increased security and privacy risks due to the large volume of sensitive and distributed data generated by connected devices. Traditional machine learning approaches for IoT security rely on centralized data aggregation, which raises privacy concerns, scalability limitations, and regulatory challenges. This study presents a systematic literature review of privacy-enhanced federated learning (PEFL) for secure IoT applications. The review analyzes federated learning architectures, optimization strategies, privacy-preserving mechanisms, and cybersecurity use cases in heterogeneous IoT environments. Findings indicate that federated learning improves privacy by keeping data localized at edge devices, while techniques such as differential privacy and secure aggregation enhance confidentiality. However, these methods introduce trade-offs in accuracy, communication efficiency, and computational overhead. Hierarchical and adaptive FL architectures improve scalability and robustness, particularly for intrusion detection systems. Persistent challenges include non-IID data, device heterogeneity, limited edge resources, and the lack of standardized benchmarks and real-world deployments. PEFL offers a promising framework for securing IoT systems, though further research is needed to address deployment and performance constraints in practical environments.

Author Biographies

Mohammed Ajuji, Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Science, Gombe State University, Gombe State, Nigeria

mceclip0-61e245057a4f4a3924694bae785c2548.png

Mohammed Ajuji     is a lecturer in the Department of Computer Science, Gombe State University, Gombe, Nigeria. He received his B.Sc. in Computer Science from Gombe State University in 2012 and his M.Sc. in Computer Science from Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, Bauchi in 2023. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Computer Science at Modibbo Adama University, Yola, Nigeria. His research interests include artificial intelligence, machine learning, deep learning, and computer vision, with applications in smart systems and sustainable development. He can be contacted at email: [email protected].

Yusuf Musa Malgwi, Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Computing, Modibbo Adama University, Adamawa State, Nigeria

mceclip1-19332e9ecda74efb9a7c37318a2c2be1.png

Yusuf Musa Malgwi     is a Senior Lecturer and Head of the Department of Computer Science at Modibbo Adama University, Yola, Nigeria. He obtained his B.Tech. in Computer Science from the Federal University of Technology, Yola (now Modibbo Adama University) in 2006 and his M.Sc. in Computer Science from Adamawa State University, Mubi in 2014. He earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Modibbo Adama University, Yola in 2019. His research interests include machine learning, artificial intelligence, medical informatics, and computational intelligence, with applications in healthcare systems, cybersecurity, and intelligent decision support. He can be contacted at email: [email protected].

Asabe Sandra Ahmadu, Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Computing, Modibbo Adama University, Adamawa State, Nigeria

mceclip2-d9d5eb77bda185dc3c982831eb426048.png

Asabe Sandra Ahmadu     is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science, Modibbo Adama University, Yola, Nigeria. She obtained her B.Tech. in Computer Science from Federal University of Technology, Yola (now Modibbo Adama University), and her M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Computer Science from Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, Bauchi. Her research interests include data mining, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and image processing, with applications in education, health informatics, and remote sensing. She can be contacted at email: [email protected].

 

References

[1] M. Abadi, A. Agarwal, P. Barham, E. Brevdo, Z. Chen, C. Citro, et al., “TensorFlow: Large-scale machine learning on heterogeneous systems,” Proc. 12th USENIX Symp. Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI), 2016.

[2] N. Abbas, Y. Zhang, A. Taherkordi, and T. Skeie, “Mobile edge computing: A survey,” IEEE Internet Things J., vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 1400–1421, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1109/JIOT.2021.3097904

[3] S. R. Abbas, Z. Abbas, A. Zahir, and S. W. Lee, “Federated learning in smart healthcare: A comprehensive review on privacy, security, and predictive analytics with IoT integration,” Healthcare, vol. 12, no. 24, p. 2587, 2025. https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare12242587

[4] M. Ajuji, M. Dawaki, A. Mohammed, and A. Ahmad, “Estimating residential natural gas demand and consumption: A hybrid ensemble machine learning approach,” Vokasi Unesa Bulletin of Engineering, Technology and Applied Science, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 549–557, 2025. https://doi.org/10.26740/vubeta.v2i3.40135

[5] M. N. Alatawi, “SAFEL-IoT: Secure adaptive federated learning with explainability for anomaly detection in 6G-enabled smart industry 5.0,” Electronics, vol. 14, no. 11, p. 2153, 2025. https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics14112153

[6] A. Alazab, A. Khraisat, S. Singh, and T. Jan, “Enhancing privacy-preserving intrusion detection through federated learning,” Electronics, vol. 12, no. 16, p. 3382, 2023. https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics12163382

[7] A. Al-Fuqaha, M. Guizani, M. Mohammadi, M. Aledhari, and M. Ayyash, “Internet of Things: A survey on enabling technologies, protocols, and applications,” IEEE Commun. Surv. Tutor., vol. 17, no. 4, pp. 2347–2376, 2015. https://doi.org/10.1109/COMST.2015.2444095

[8] E. Bagdasaryan, A. Veit, Y. Hua, D. Estrin, and V. Shmatikov, “How to backdoor federated learning,” Proc. Int. Conf. Artif. Intell. Stat. (AISTATS), 2020.

[9] D. Bankov, E. Khorov, and A. Lyakhov, “On the limits of LoRaWAN channel access,” Proc. Int. Conf. Eng. Telecommun. (EnT), pp. 10–14, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1109/EnT.2016.011.

[10] E. M. Campos et al., “Evaluating federated learning for intrusion detection in Internet of Things: Review and challenges,” Comput. Netw., vol. 203, p. 108661, 2022.

[11] T. Chen and C. Guestrin, “XGBoost: A scalable tree boosting system,” in Proc. ACM SIGKDD Int. Conf. Knowl. Discov. Data Min., pp. 785–794, 2016. https://doi.org/10.1145/2939672.2939785

[12] X. Chen et al., “Trustworthy federated learning: Privacy, security, and beyond,” Knowl. Inf. Syst., early access, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10115-024-02285-2

[13] Cisco, “Annual Internet Report,” 2023. [Online]. Available: Cisco. Accessed: May 12, 2025.

[14] J. W. Creswell and J. D. Creswell, Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches, 5th ed. Thousand Oaks, CA, USA: SAGE, 2018.

[15] J. W. Creswell and V. L. Plano Clark, Designing and Conducting Mixed Methods Research, 3rd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA, USA: SAGE, 2017.

[16] S. García, M. Grill, J. Stiborek, and A. Zunino, “An empirical comparison of botnet detection methods,” Comput. Secur., vol. 45, pp. 100–123, 2014. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cose.2014.05.011

[17] R. C. Geyer, T. Klein, and M. Nabi, “Differentially private federated learning: A client-level perspective,” arXiv preprint arXiv:1712.07557, 2017.

[18] R. Gosselin et al., “Privacy and security in federated learning: A survey,” Appl. Sci., vol. 12, no. 19, p. 9901, 2022. https://doi.org/10.3390/app12199901

[19] C. He et al., “FedML: A research library and benchmark for federated machine learning,” arXiv preprint arXiv:2007.13518, 2020.

[20] S. Hochreiter and J. Schmidhuber, “Long short-term memory,” Neural Comput., vol. 9, no. 8, pp. 1735–1780, 1997. https://doi.org/10.1162/neco.1997.9.8.1735

[21] H. B. McMahan, E. Moore, D. Ramage, S. Hampson, and B. A. y Arcas, “Communication-efficient learning of deep networks from decentralized data,” Proc. 20th Int. Conf. Artificial Intelligence and Statistics (AISTATS), 2017, pp. 1273–1282.

[22] P. Kairouz, H. B. McMahan, B. Avent, A. Bellet, M. Bennis, A. N. Bhagoji, et al., “Advances and open problems in federated learning,” Foundations and Trends® in Machine Learning, vol. 14, no. 1–2, pp. 1–210, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1561/2200000083

[23] N. Koroniotis et al., “Towards the development of realistic botnet dataset in the Internet of Things,” Future Gener. Comput. Syst., vol. 100, pp. 779–796, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.future.2019.05.041

[24] T. Li, A. K. Sahu, A. Talwalkar, and V. Smith, “Federated learning: Challenges, methods, and future directions,” IEEE Signal Process. Mag., vol. 37, no. 3, pp. 50–60, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1109/MSP.2020.2975749

[25] N. Moustafa and J. Slay, “UNSW-NB15: A comprehensive data set for network intrusion detection systems,” in Proc. Mil. Commun. Inf. Syst. Conf. (MilCIS), pp. 1–6, 2015. https://doi.org/10.1109/MilCIS.2015.7348942

[26] D. C. Nguyen et al., “Federated learning for Internet of Things: A comprehensive survey,” IEEE Commun. Surv. Tutor., vol. 23, no. 3, pp. 1622–1658, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1109/COMST.2021.3075439

[27] A. Paszke et al., “PyTorch: An imperative style, high-performance deep learning library,” in Adv. Neural Inf. Process. Syst., vol. 32, pp. 8026–8037, 2019.

[28] F. Pedregosa et al., “Scikit-learn: Machine learning in Python,” J. Mach. Learn. Res., vol. 12, pp. 2825–2830, 2011.

[29] I. Sharafaldin, A. H. Lashkari, and A. A. Ghorbani, “Toward generating a new intrusion detection dataset,” in Proc. ICISSP, pp. 108–116, 2018. https://doi.org/10.5220/0006639801080116

[30] H. Zhu, J. Xu, S. Liu, and Y. Jin, “Federated learning on non-IID data: A survey,” Neurocomputing, vol. 465, pp. 371–390, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neucom.2021.01.119

[31] K. Peng, M. Li, H. Huang, C. Wang, S. Wan, and K. K. R. Choo, “Security challenges and opportunities for smart contracts in Internet of Things: A survey,” IEEE Internet Things J., vol. 8, no. 15, pp. 12004–12020, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1109/JIOT.2021.3074544

[32] G. F. Riley and T. R. Henderson, “The ns-3 network simulator,” in Modeling and Tools for Network Simulation. Berlin, Germany: Springer, pp. 15–34, 2010. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-12331-3_2

[33] P. Ruzafa-Alcázar et al., “Intrusion detection based on privacy-preserving federated IDS using differential privacy,” IEEE Access, vol. 10, pp. 62098–62113, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2022.3178054

[34] T. Ryffel et al., “A generic framework for privacy-preserving deep learning,” J. Mach. Learn. Res., vol. 21, no. 1, pp. 1–46, 2020.

[35] M. Sarhan, W. W. Lo, S. Layeghy, and M. Portmann, “HBFL: A hierarchical blockchain-based federated learning framework for collaborative IoT intrusion detection,” Comput. Electr. Eng., vol. 103, p. 108379, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compeleceng.2022.108379

[36] J. Shen et al., “Effective intrusion detection in heterogeneous Internet-of-Things networks via ensemble knowledge distillation-based federated learning,” arXiv preprint arXiv:2401.11968, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICC51166.2024.10622262

[37] A. Shostack, Threat Modeling: Designing for Security. Hoboken, NJ, USA: Wiley, 2014.

[38] B. Shubyn et al., “Resource consumption of federated learning approach applied on edge IoT devices in the AGV environment,” Proc. Int. Conf. Comput. Sci. (ICCS), 2023. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36030-5_39

[39] S. Sicari, A. Rizzardi, L. A. Grieco, and A. Coen-Porisini, “Security, privacy and trust in IoT: Challenges and solutions,” Comput. Netw., vol. 190, p. 107859, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comnet.2021.107859

[40] H. Tabrizchi and M. Aghasi, “Cyber security intelligent systems based on federated learning,” Adv. Multimedia and Ubiquitous Engineering: FutureTech 2024, C. Figueroa, T. H. Kim, and K. Choo, Eds. Singapore: Springer, pp. 33–43, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-86592-3_4

[41] M. Tavallaee, E. Bagheri, W. Lu, and A. A. Ghorbani, “A detailed analysis of the KDD CUP 99 data set,” Proc. IEEE Symp. Comput. Intell. Secur. Def. Appl., pp. 1–6, 2009. https://doi.org/10.1109/CISDA.2009.5356528

[42] A. Vyas, P.-C. Lin, R.-H. Hwang, and M. Tripathi, “Privacy-preserving federated learning for intrusion detection in IoT environments: A survey,” IEEE Access, vol. 12, pp. 127018–127050, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2024.3454211

[43] T. Xie, J. Liu, C. Zhang, and M. Chen, “Adaptive federated learning for heterogeneous IoT environments: A survey,” IEEE Internet Things J., vol. 10, no. 5, pp. 3212–3228, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1109/JIOT.2022.3194719

[44] Y. Zhang, R. Yu, and S. Xie, “Privacy-preserving machine learning for healthcare: A survey,” IEEE Trans. Ind. Informatics, vol. 17, no. 6, pp. 3772–3784, 2021.

[45] R. Zhao, H. Chen, Y. Li, Y. Yin, J. Xu, Z. Xu, and Q. Yang, “Federated learning with non-IID data in edge computing: A survey,” IEEE Internet of Things Journal, vol. 8, no. 6, pp. 4475–4497, Mar. 2021. https://doi.org/10.1109/JIOT.2020.3033424

[46] H. Zhu, J. Xu, S. Liu, and Y. Jin, “Federated learning on non-IID data: A survey,” Neurocomputing, vol. 465, pp. 371–390, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neucom.2021.01.119

[47] A. G. Howard et al., “MobileNets: Efficient convolutional neural networks for mobile vision applications,” arXiv preprint arXiv:1704.04861, 2017.

[48] X. Huang, J. Liu, Y. Lai, B. Mao, and H. Lyu, “EEFED: Personalized federated learning of execution and evaluation dual network for CPS intrusion detection,” IEEE Trans. Inf. Forensics Secur., 2023. https://doi.org/10.1109/TIFS.2023.3327481

[49] G. Ke et al., “LightGBM: A highly efficient gradient boosting decision tree,” in Adv. Neural Inf. Process. Syst. (NeurIPS), vol. 30, pp. 3146–3154, 2017.

[50] L. U. Khan, W. Saad, Z. Han, E. Hossain, and C. S. Hong, “Federated learning for Internet of Things: Recent advances, taxonomy, and open challenges,” arXiv preprint arXiv:2009.13012, 2020.

[51] L. Lyu, H. Yu, and Q. Yang, “Towards fair and privacy-preserving federated deep models,” IEEE Trans. Mobile Comput., vol. 21, no. 3, pp. 838–851, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1109/TMC.2020.2981310.

[52] S. A. Mahmud, N. Islam, Z. Islam, Z. Rahman, and S. T. Mehedi, “Privacy-preserving federated learning-based intrusion detection technique for cyber-physical systems,” Mathematics, vol. 12, no. 20, p. 3194, 2024. https://doi.org/10.3390/math12203194

[53] H. U. Manzoor, A. Shabbir, A. Chen, D. Flynn, and A. Zoha, “A survey of security strategies in federated learning: Defending models, data, and privacy,” Future Internet, vol. 16, no. 10, p. 374, 2024. https://doi.org/10.3390/fi16100374

[54] T. M. Mengistu, T. Kim, and J.-W. Lin, “A survey on heterogeneity taxonomy, security, and privacy preservation in the integration of IoT, wireless sensor networks, and federated learning,” Sensors, vol. 24, no. 3, p. 968, 2024. https://doi.org/10.3390/s24030968

[55] MITRE, “MITRE ATT&CK: Adversarial tactics, techniques, and common knowledge,” 2023. [Online]. Available: https://attack.mitre.org/

[56] F. Mosaiyebzadeh et al., “Privacy-enhancing technologies in federated learning for the Internet of Healthcare Things: A survey,” Electronics, vol. 12, no. 12, p. 2703, 2023. https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics12122703

[57] N. Moustafa, “A new distributed architecture for evaluating AI-based security systems at the edge: Network TON_IoT datasets,” Sustain. Cities Soc., vol. 72, p. 102994, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scs.2021.102994

[58] N. Naik, “Choice of effective messaging protocols for IoT systems: MQTT, CoAP, AMQP and HTTP,” in Proc. IEEE Int. Syst. Eng. Symp. (ISSE), pp. 1–7, 2017. https://doi.org/10.1109/SysEng.2017.8088251

[59] D. C. Nguyen, M. Ding, P. N. Pathirana, and A. Seneviratne, “Federated learning for smart cities: Recent advances and applications,” IEEE Commun. Surv. Tutor., vol. 25, no. 1, pp. 734–766, 2023.

[60] R. Ryffel et al., “A generic framework for privacy-preserving deep learning,” J. Mach. Learn. Res., vol. 21, no. 1, pp. 1–46, 2020.

[61] J. Zhang, R. Yu, and S. Xie, “Privacy-preserving machine learning for healthcare: A survey,” IEEE Trans. Ind. Informatics, vol. 17, no. 6, pp. 3772–3784, 2021.

[62] H. Zhu, J. Xu, S. Liu, and Y. Jin, “Federated learning on non-IID data: A survey,” Neurocomputing, vol. 465, pp. 371–390, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neucom.2021.01.119

[63] D. Bestari and A. Wibowo, "IoT Based Real-Time Weather Monitoring System Using Telegram Bot and Thingsboard Platform", International Journal of Interactive Mobile Technologies (iJIM), vol. 17, no. 06, pp. 4-19, 2023. https://doi.org/10.3991/ijim.v17i06.34129

[64] R. D. Handayani, Z. Jamal, M. Alkahfiansyah, L. Rosmalia, N. H Sudibyo, and R. Herwanto, “Intelligent and Secure Package Receiver System Utilizing Internet of Things (IoT) Technology”, Vokasi Unesa Bull. Eng. Technol. Appl. Sci., vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 581–592, Sep. 2025. https://doi.org/10.26740/vubeta.v2i3.38254

[65] M. M. Mansour, A. M. lafta, A. M. Salman, and H. S. Salman, “Exploring the Impact of AI and IoT on Production Efficiency, Quality Precision, and Environmental Sustainability in Manufacturing”, Vokasi Unesa Bull. Eng. Technol. Appl. Sci., vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 342–355, Jun. 2025. https://doi.org/10.26740/vubeta.v2i2.38200

Downloads

Published

2026-08-06

How to Cite

[1]
M. Ajuji, Y. M. Malgwi, and A. S. Ahmadu, “Privacy-Enhanced Federated Learning Model for Secure Internet of Things Applications: A Systematic Review”, Vokasi UNESA Bull. Eng. Technol. Appl. Sci., vol. 3, no. 3, pp. 445–460, Aug. 2026.
Abstract views: 186 , PDF Downloads: 17

Similar Articles

<< < 2 3 4 5 6 7 

You may also start an advanced similarity search for this article.