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Enrique Tomás Martínez Beltrán

Federated learning, trustworthy AI and cyberdefense research, focused on systems that are robust, privacy-preserving and useful in security operations.

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Enrique Tomás Martínez Beltrán. All rights reserved.

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  1. Home
  2. Decentralized Federated Learning
Research topic

Decentralized Federated Learning

Peer-to-peer and semi-decentralized learning systems for security-critical environments where raw data cannot be centralized.

DFLFederated LearningDecentralized Federated Learning

What decentralized federated learning solves

Decentralized Federated Learning (DFL) studies how multiple organizations, devices or agents can train models collaboratively without moving raw data to a central server. This matters when centralization is impractical, legally sensitive or operationally fragile, such as in defense, IoT, industrial monitoring and cross-organization cybersecurity.

  • Training keeps data local while sharing model updates, prototypes or distilled knowledge.
  • The architecture reduces reliance on a single coordinator and supports peer-to-peer collaboration.
  • Security, robustness and communication efficiency become first-order research constraints.

Core research challenges

The hardest DFL scenarios combine non-IID data, heterogeneous devices, intermittent connectivity and adversarial behavior. A robust system must decide which peers to trust, how to aggregate information, how to detect malicious updates and how to continue learning when parts of the federation are unstable.

  • Byzantine and poisoning attacks against decentralized aggregation.
  • Communication-efficient learning with limited bandwidth and unstable peers.
  • Fairness and reliability when clients have different data, resources and availability.

How this portfolio connects the topic

The related work in this site covers DFL frameworks, situational awareness, reputation, prototype exchange, ensemble distillation and security monitoring. The goal is not only to train distributed models, but to make their behavior understandable, resilient and useful in security-critical deployments.

On this page

DFLFederated LearningDecentralized Federated Learning

Frequently asked questions

How is decentralized federated learning different from standard federated learning?

Standard federated learning usually relies on a central coordinator. DFL removes or reduces that central role so peers can exchange updates, models or representations directly or through semi-decentralized structures.

Why is DFL relevant for cyberdefense?

Cyberdefense often involves sensitive telemetry distributed across organizations or devices. DFL can support collaborative detection and mitigation while keeping raw evidence local.

What makes DFL hard to deploy?

The main barriers are unreliable peers, non-IID data, communication limits, adversarial clients, privacy risk in shared updates and the lack of mature operational tooling.

Related projects

DEFENDIS: Decentralized Federated Learning for IoT Device Identification and Security

DEFENDIS develops a framework for uniquely identifying IoT devices in a distributed manner while solving security threats through decentralized federated learning.

View Project

TITAN: Trustworthy and Intelligent Threat Analysis

A project with armasuisse Cyber-Defence Campus investigating trustworthy threat intelligence sharing and verification algorithms.

View Project

DECIMAL: DECentralized Intelligent Multimodal Adaptive Learning

A collaboration with armasuisse Cyber-Defence Campus developing robust, resource-efficient and adaptive learning for multimodal sensor ecosystems.

View Project

DATRIS: Decentralized AI for Trustworthy and Resource-efficient Intelligent Systems

Developed decentralized AI solutions addressing computational constraints and trust validation under armasuisse Cyber-Defence Campus sponsorship.

View Project

Related notes

From Monitoring to Mitigation: A DFL Cyberdefense Lifecycle with LLM Explanations

A practical note on how distributed monitoring, DFL models, alert evidence and LLM-based support can fit into a cyberdefense workflow.

Decentralized Federated LearningLLMsExplainable AI
Read More

Situational Awareness for Cyberdefense with Decentralized Federated Learning

A research note on using DFL to turn distributed telemetry, anomalies and trust signals into cyberdefense situational awareness.

Situational AwarenessDecentralized Federated LearningExplainable AI
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Drones, Edge Intelligence and DFL for Cyberdefense Operations

A technical note on how drone fleets can use DFL to collaborate on detection models without exposing mission telemetry.

Decentralized Federated LearningCyberdefenseEdge AI
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Byzantine-Resilient Aggregation for Decentralized Federated Learning

A focused research note on median, trimmed mean and trust-weighted aggregation for peer-to-peer federations under poisoning and unreliable clients.

Decentralized Federated LearningTrustworthy AIAdversarial ML
Read More

Privacy-Preserving IoT Security with Decentralized Federated Learning

A research note on edge training, secure aggregation and adaptive privacy budgets for IoT security monitoring.

Decentralized Federated LearningIoT SecurityPrivacy-Preserving AI
Read More