PyFF: A Fog-Based Flexible Architecture for EnablingPrivacy-by-Design IoT-Based Communal Smart Environments

Abstract

The advent of the Internet of Things (IoT) and the massive growth of devices connected tothe Internet are reshaping modern societies. However, human lifestyles are not evolving at the samepace as technology, which often derives into users’ reluctance and aversion. Although it is essentialto consider user involvement/privacy while deploying IoT devices in a human-centric environment,current IoT architecture standards tend to neglect the degree of trust that humans require to adoptthese technologies on a daily basis. In this regard, this paper proposes an architecture to enableprivacy-by-design with human-in-the-loop IoT environments. In this regard, it first distills two IoTuse-cases with high human interaction to analyze the interactions between human beings and IoTdevices in an environment which had not previously been subject to the Internet of People principles..Leveraging the lessons learned in these use-cases, the Privacy-enabling Fog-based and Flexible (PyFF)human-centric and human-aware architecture is proposed which brings together distributed andintelligent systems are brought together. PyFF aims to maintain end-users’ privacy by involving themin the whole data lifecycle, allowing them to decide which information can be monitored, whereit can be computed and the appropriate feedback channels in accordance with human-in-the-loopprinciples