Towards Privacy Preserving IoT Environments: A Survey

Abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a network of Internet-enabled devices that can sense, communicate, and react to changes in their environment. Billions of these computing devices are connected to the Internet to exchange data between themselves and/or their infrastructure. IoT promises to enable a plethora of smart services in almost every aspect of our daily interactions and improve the overall quality of life. However, with the increasing wide adoption of IoT, come significant privacy concerns to lose control of how our data is collected and shared with others. As such, privacy is a core requirement in any IoT ecosystem and is a major concern that inhibits its widespread user adoption. The ultimate source of user discomfort is the lack of control over personal raw data that is directly streamed from sensors to the outside world. In this survey, we review existing research and proposed solutions to rising privacy concerns from a multipoint of view to identify the risks and mitigations. First, we provide an evaluation of privacy issues and concerns in IoT systems due to resource constraints. Second, we describe the proposed IoT solutions that embrace a variety of privacy concerns such as identification, tracking, monitoring, and profiling. Lastly, we discuss the mechanisms and architectures for protecting IoT data in case of mobility at the device layer, infrastructure/platform layer, and application layer.