A survey on solutions to support developers in privacy-preserving IoT development

Abstract

Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices are rising in popularity and their usefulness often stems from the amount of data they collect. Data regulations such as the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) require software developers to do their due diligence when it comes to privacy, as they are required to adhere to certain principles such as Privacy-by-Design (PbD). Due to the distributed and heterogeneous nature of IoT applications, privacy-preserving design is even more important in IoT environments. Studies have shown that developers are often not eager to implement privacy and generally do not see it as their duty or concern. However, developers are often left alone when it comes to engineering privacy in the realm of IoT. In this paper, we therefore survey which frameworks and tools have been developed for them, especially in the case of IoT. Our findings indicate that existing solutions are cumbersome to use, only work in certain scenarios, and are not enough to solve the privacy issues inherent IoT development. Based on our analysis, we further propose future research directions.