Enhancing privacy in clustering and data mining: A novel approach for sensitive data protection

In the era of big data, clustering and data mining have become essential tools for uncovering patterns and insights from vast datasets. However, these processes often involve the use of sensitive data, raising significant concerns about privacy, security, and trustworthiness. This paper proposes N2P-CM, a novel privacy-preserving framework designed to protect sensitive information during the entire clustering and mining lifecycle. Unlike existing methods that focus on partial aspects of security or apply generic encryption techniques, N2P-CM integrates five innovative and synergistic modules: Sensitive Feature Obfuscation, Adaptive Trust Weight Aggregation, Compressed Secure Semantic Embedding, Differential Traceable Execution Engine, and Blockchain Auditable Ledger. Each module contributes a distinct layer of privacy and accountability, ranging from feature-level data transformation and federated trust scoring to secure semantic encoding and traceable execution logging with blockchain support. We provide formal definitions and algorithms for each module and demonstrate their integration in a unified architecture. Extensive simulations using real-world datasets validate the efficac