Communication-Efficient and Differentially Private Vertical Federated Learning with Zeroth-Order Optimization

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Zhang, Jianing, Chen, Evan, Han, Dong-Jun, Liu, Chaoyue, Brinton, Christopher G.
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Zhang, Jianing
Chen, Evan
Han, Dong-Jun
Liu, Chaoyue
Brinton, Christopher G.
author_facet Zhang, Jianing
Chen, Evan
Han, Dong-Jun
Liu, Chaoyue
Brinton, Christopher G.
contents Vertical Federated Learning (VFL) enables collaborative model training across feature-partitioned devices, yet its reliance on device-server information exchange introduces significant communication overhead and privacy risks. Downlink communication from the server to devices in VFL exposes gradient-related signals of the global loss that can be leveraged in inference attacks. Existing privacy-preserving VFL approaches that inject differential privacy (DP) noise on the downlink have the natural repercussion of degraded gradient quality, slowed convergence, and excessive communication rounds. In this work, we propose DPZV, a communication-efficient and differentially private ZO-VFL framework with tunable privacy guarantees. Based on zeroth-order (ZO) optimization, DPZV injects calibrated scalar-valued DP noise on the downlink, significantly reducing variance amplification while providing equivalent protection against targeted inference attacks. Through rigorous theoretical analysis, we establish convergence guarantees comparable to first-order DP-SGD, despite relying solely on ZO estimators, and prove that DPZV satisfies $(ε, δ)$-DP. Extensive experiments demonstrate that DPZV consistently achieves a superior privacy-utility tradeoff and requires fewer communication rounds than existing DP-VFL baselines under strict privacy constraints ($ε\leq 10$).
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2502_20565
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Communication-Efficient and Differentially Private Vertical Federated Learning with Zeroth-Order Optimization
Zhang, Jianing
Chen, Evan
Han, Dong-Jun
Liu, Chaoyue
Brinton, Christopher G.
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Cryptography and Security
Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing
Vertical Federated Learning (VFL) enables collaborative model training across feature-partitioned devices, yet its reliance on device-server information exchange introduces significant communication overhead and privacy risks. Downlink communication from the server to devices in VFL exposes gradient-related signals of the global loss that can be leveraged in inference attacks. Existing privacy-preserving VFL approaches that inject differential privacy (DP) noise on the downlink have the natural repercussion of degraded gradient quality, slowed convergence, and excessive communication rounds. In this work, we propose DPZV, a communication-efficient and differentially private ZO-VFL framework with tunable privacy guarantees. Based on zeroth-order (ZO) optimization, DPZV injects calibrated scalar-valued DP noise on the downlink, significantly reducing variance amplification while providing equivalent protection against targeted inference attacks. Through rigorous theoretical analysis, we establish convergence guarantees comparable to first-order DP-SGD, despite relying solely on ZO estimators, and prove that DPZV satisfies $(ε, δ)$-DP. Extensive experiments demonstrate that DPZV consistently achieves a superior privacy-utility tradeoff and requires fewer communication rounds than existing DP-VFL baselines under strict privacy constraints ($ε\leq 10$).
title Communication-Efficient and Differentially Private Vertical Federated Learning with Zeroth-Order Optimization
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Cryptography and Security
Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.20565