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

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