Secure PAC Bayesian Regression via Real Shamir Secret Sharing

A common approach of system identification and machine learning is to generate a model by using training data to predict the test data instances as accurately as possible. Nonetheless, concerns about data privacy are increasingly raised, but not always addressed. We present a secure protocol for learning a linear model relying on a recently described technique called real number secret sharing. We take as our starting point the PAC Bayesian bounds and deduce a closed form for the model parameters which depends on the data and the prior from the PAC Bayesian bounds. To obtain the model parameters one needs to solve a linear system. However, we consider the situation where several parties hold different data instances and they are not willing to give up the privacy of the data. Hence, we suggest to use real number secret sharing and multiparty computation to share the data and solve the linear regression with a secure distributed Gaussian elimination protocol such that privacy of the data is preserved. The benefit of using secret sharing directly on real numbers is reflected in the simplicity of the protocols and the number of rounds needed. However, this comes with the drawback that a share might leak a small amount of information, but in our analysis we argue that the leakage is small.