Smart home security: challenges, issues and solutions at different IoT layers

The Internet of Things is a rapidly evolving technology in which interconnected computing devices and sensors share data over the network to decipher different problems and deliver new services. For example, IoT is the key enabling technology for smart homes. Smart home technology provides many facilities to users like temperature monitoring, smoke detection, automatic light control, smart locks, etc. However, it also opens the door to new set of security and privacy issues, for example, the private data of users can be accessed by taking control over surveillance devices or activating false fire alarms, etc. These challenges make smart homes feeble to various types of security attacks and people are reluctant to adopt this technology due to the security issues. In this survey paper, we throw light on IoT, how IoT is growing, objects and their specifications, the layered structure of the IoT environment, and various security challenges for each layer that occur in the smart home. This paper not only presents the challenges and issues that emerge in IoT-based smart homes but also presents some solutions that would help to overcome these security challenges.