Security and Privacy in Industry 5.0: Emerging Technical Challenges and Future Pathways

Abstract

A human-centered, resilient, and sustainable industrial ecosystem where people and intelligent systems work closely together is what Industry 5.0 offers. As industrial systems become more dispersed, data-rich, and interactive, security and privacy threats increase even as efficiency and customization gains are unlocked. The Privacy-Preserving Federated Edge Ledger (PFEL), an integrated, novel framework that combines federated learning, lightweight distributed ledgers, trusted execution environments, adaptive trust scoring, and fine-grained differential privacy to protect data and decision integrity without compromising human-in-the-loop responsiveness, is presented in this paper along with a focused analysis of the fundamental security and privacy challenges in Industry 5.0 and a survey of pertinent technical building blocks. We offer an Industry 5.0-specific threat model, describe the architecture of PFEL, outline safe model aggregation and auditability procedures, examine security and performance trade-offs, and suggest an assessment roadmap with quantifiable metrics. Lastly, we highlight future directions that harmonize security and privacy design with human-centric industrial ideals and examine wider socio-technical and legal ramifications.