Abstract
The tremendous growth of the Internet of things is unbelievable. Many IoT devices have emerged on the market over the last decade. This has made our everyday life easier inside our homes. The technology used at home has changed significantly over the past several decades, leading to what is known today as the smart home. However, this growth has also brought new challenges to our home security and privacy. With the smart home becoming more mainstream, cybersecurity issues have become a fundamental concern. The smart home is an environment where heterogeneous devices and appliances are interconnected through the Internet of Things (IoT) to provide smart services to residents. These services include home climate control, energy management, video on demand, music on-demand, remote healthcare, remote control, and other similar services in a ubiquitous manner. Smart home devices can be controlled via the Internet using smartphones. However, connecting smart home appliances to wireless networks and the Internet makes individuals vulnerable to malicious attacks. Remote access within the same environment or over the Internet requires an effective access control mechanism. This paper intends to shed light on how smart home devices are working as well as the type of security and privacy threats of the smart home. It also illustrated the types of authentication methods that can be used with smart home devices. In addition, a comparison of Smart home IoT-based security protocols was presented along with a security countermeasure that can be used in a smart home environment. Finally, a few open problems were mentioned as future research directions for researchers.