Privacy Preservation Techniques (PPTs) in IoT Systems: A Scoping Review and Future Directions
Emmanuel Alalade, Ashraf Matrawy
TL;DR
The paper conducts a PRISMA-ScR-based scoping review of Privacy Preservation Techniques (PPTs) in IoT from 2010 to early 2023, mapping the technologies (PETs) used to implement PPTs, the IoT applications and architectures where they are deployed, and the privacy types addressed. It finds cryptography as the dominant technology and anonymity as the principal goal, with expanding attention to emerging IoT domains like Social IoT (S-IoT) and IoMT. The review identifies that PPTs are most often cloud-based and concentrated in medical IoT, while device identity privacy and location privacy are less frequently studied. It also outlines gaps, such as underexplored device privacy, limited cross-layer end-to-end PPT deployment, and insufficient threat- and impact-driven privacy engineering approaches, and suggests future directions to address these challenges. Overall, the work provides a comprehensive map of PPTs in IoT and offers guidance for researchers and practitioners on technology choices, target privacy types, and IoT domain considerations.
Abstract
Privacy preservation in Internet of Things (IoT) systems requires the use of privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) built from innovative technologies such as cryptography and artificial intelligence (AI) to create techniques called privacy preservation techniques (PPTs). These PPTs achieve various privacy goals and address different privacy concerns by mitigating potential privacy threats within IoT systems. This study carried out a scoping review of different types of PPTs used in previous research works on IoT systems between 2010 and early 2023 to further explore the advantages of privacy preservation in these systems. This scoping review looks at privacy goals, possible technologies used for building PET, the integration of PPTs into the computing layer of the IoT architecture, different IoT applications in which PPTs are deployed, and the different privacy types addressed by these techniques within IoT systems. Key findings, such as the prominent privacy goal and privacy type in IoT, are discussed in this survey, along with identified research gaps that could inform future endeavors in privacy research and benefit the privacy research community and other stakeholders in IoT systems.