Privacy enhanced decision tree inference

Abstract

In many areas in machine learning, decision trees play a crucial role in classification and regression. When a decision tree based classifier is hosted as a service in a critical application with the need for privacy protection of the service as well as the user data, fully homomorphic encrypted can be employed. However, a decision node in a decision tree can't be directly implemented in FHE. In this paper, we describe an end-to-end approach to support privacyenhanced decision tree classification using IBM supported open-source library HELib. Using several options for building a decision node and employing oblivious computations coupled with an argmax function in FHE we show that a highly secure and trusted decision tree service can be enabled.