A Survey of User Perspectives on Security and Privacy in a Home Networking Environment

TL;DR

This paper systematically reviews recent literature on smart home security and privacy from a user perspective, identifying research gaps and proposing future directions for more comprehensive understanding and frameworks.

Contribution

It provides the first recent systematic review focusing on user perspectives in smart home security and privacy since the 2010s, highlighting key research gaps and future directions.

Findings

Identified lack of recent literature reviews on user perspectives since 2010s.

Highlighted need for holistic methods considering diverse devices and users.

Proposed future research directions including comprehensive ontologies.

Abstract

The security and privacy of smart home systems, particularly from a home user's perspective, have been a very active research area in recent years. However, via a meta-review of 52 review papers covering related topics (published between 2000 and 2021), this paper shows a lack of a more recent literature review on user perspectives of smart home security and privacy since the 2010s. This identified gap motivated us to conduct a systematic literature review (SLR) covering 126 relevant research papers published from 2010 to 2021. Our SLR led to the discovery of a number of important areas where further research is needed; these include holistic methods that consider a more diverse and heterogeneous range of home devices, interactions between multiple home users, complicated data flow between multiple home devices and home users, some less-studied demographic factors, and advanced conceptual frameworks. Based on these findings, we recommended key future research directions, e.g., research for a better understanding of security and privacy aspects in different multi-device and multi-user contexts, and a more comprehensive ontology on the security and privacy of the smart home covering varying types of home devices and behaviors of different types of home users.