Exploring IoT privacy compliance research: a topic modeling approach

Regulatory authorities worldwide are developing cybersecurity standards and data protection regulations related to Internet of Things (IoT) devices to protect user information. As smart IoT technologies evolve, the implementation of such regulations and standards is highly crucial for allowing the secure storage, processing, and transfer of data. Given the ongoing research and development of smart IoT technologies across various domains, we aim to investigate whether critical compliance standards are adequately addressed in existing academic research. Through an in-depth analysis utilizing topic modeling and large language model (LLM) approaches, we identified the top five researched areas and their relationship with relevant regulations. We identified that while substantial progress has been made in addressing the technical challenges associated with IoT privacy, there remains an urgent need for research that bridges these solutions with socio-technical systems and compliance. Our research emphasizes the importance of adopting privacy-by-design at the initial stages of IoT implementation. Additionally, we determined research gaps in existing studies and proposed future research directions emphasizing the development of IoT frameworks that are not only technologically robust but also align with evolving legal compliance standards.