Journal of Recent Trends in Computer Science and Engineering (JRTCSE)

Vol. 10, No. 2, July-Dec 2022, PP. 71-92.

ISSN: 2322-0872
https://jrtcse.com
DOI: https://doi.org/10.70589/JRTCSE.2022.2.7

Behavioral Biometrics for IoT Security: A Machine Learning

Framework for Smart Homes
Arpit Garg,
Infosys, PA, USA.

Abstract
The exponential proliferation of IoT devices and smart home technologies has posed fresh
challenges in controlling secure access. Outdated mechanisms of access-using passwords, key-
fobs, or biometrics-have become inadequate in tackling threats that constantly change and
evolve within the heterogeneous and interconnected environments. Thus, ML has been
recognized to provide a promising paradigm to strengthen access control mechanisms, to
enforce dynamic adaptability, and to realize real-time anomaly detection and behavior-based
decision-making powers.
This paper conducts extensive research into machine learning-based access control systems for
smart home and IoT environments. The limitations of traditional access control methods are
discussed, thus underscoring the need for intelligent, automated systems that can learn
contextual access behaviors. The second part of the study conducts a thorough literature review
that reinforces the advantages of ML models, including Random Forest, CNNs, Autoencoders,
and Federated Learning frameworks, for assisting legitimate users while detecting anomalies
in real time [3], [5], [6], [10], [28].
Proposed is a concept integrating supervised and unsupervised learning models into the access
control framework to be trained on benchmark datasets such as IoTID20 and Bot-IoT, with
evaluation metrics including accuracy, precision, recall, and F1-score, therefore showing a
significant improvement upon detection performance compared to legacy systems. The highest
accuracy of 96.1% was achieved by CNNs, whereas Autoencoders did have good anomaly
detection capabilities with the lowest training overhead. Moreover, the smart door lock case
study allows evaluating real-world applicability and latency performance.
Finally, the work describes emerging trends such as privacy-preserving learning, XAI,
lightweight edge inference, and 6G-enabled IoT security architecture integration. The studies
confirmed and validated that ML-powered access control systems can help to secure IoT while
making scalable, adaptive, and intelligent smart home infrastructures. This study offers a
working, modular design for the integration of ML-assisted authentication into future-proof
smart environments.

Keywords: Machine Learning, Access Control, Smart Home, Internet of Things, Intrusion
Detection, Federated Learning, Anomaly Detection, Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN),
Autoencoder, Edge Computing, Privacy-Preserving AI, Smart Lock, Behavior-Based
Authentication, IoT Security, Lightweight Models.

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Citation: Arpit Garg. (2022). Behavioral biometrics for IoT security: A machine learning
framework for smart homes. Journal of Recent Trends in Computer Science and
Engineering, 10(2), 71–92. https://doi.org/10.70589/JRTCSE.2022.2.7

1. Introduction

The integration of IoT devices into modern homes has thus produced a rapid growth of smart
environments wherein day-to-day activities are aided by interconnected devices that sense,
process, and communicate. As of 2024, over 14.3 billion IoT devices were active worldwide,
a large portion of them installed in smart homes to carry out automation, surveillance, or energy
management [5]. From smart locks and surveillance cameras to voice assistants or climate
controllers, one can think of another intelligent appliance; this ecosystem offers convenience,
personalization, and efficiency. Such increases in connectivity and automation even widen the
attack surface, making smart homes prone to illegal infiltration, data breaches, and malicious
device manipulations.

Access control is the process that either grants or denies a request to a resource and is essential
to securing these smart environments. Traditional access control systems tend to provide a
more static control over access based on simple rules, role-based permissions, or biometric
verifications [3], [6]. That, however, was native to an isolated setting; hence, in the dynamic,
distributed, and heterogeneous world of IoT, equipment of such sort is not to perform their
duties. Attackers can leverage hardcoded credentials in applications, spoof biometric
signatures, or bypass any rule-based system with relative ease. Furthermore, there are
computational and energy constraints at the end of IoT devices, making it nearly impossible to
deploy traditional heavy security protocols to act as a deterrent.

ML is a promising solution in this respect. ML models work on massive data they feed on.
They learn complex patterns and recognize and evolve from such threats without manual
programming [1], [5], [10]. Supervised and unsupervised techniques can detect suspicious
behaviors, verify user identities through behavioral biometrics, and signal anomalies in real
time. A number of models, such as Random Forests, CNNs, and Autoencoders, have
outperformed other approaches in detecting malicious activities in distributed environments
[6], [16], [24]. From another perspective, FL is a privacy-preserving approach in which devices
cooperate to train machine learning algorithms without sharing raw data [28].

In accordance with access control measures, the other major benefit of machine learning
corresponds to behavior-based authentication [7], [15], [25]. Behavior-based authentication
doesn't just go by identity tokens or fingerprints but instead relies on a machine learning system

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to infer what is legitimate behavior through sensor readings, user routines, device interaction
patterns, and environmental cues. For example, a smart lock could train to identify any gait,
voice outputs, or even usage of smartphones within the context of household members and
allow access only if the said constructs valuables with the learned profiles [35], [36].

Yet, this is complicated! Model interpretability is very important, especially when AI decisions
must be auditable for compliance and transparency [37]. Light-weight computation ensuring
real-time inference on constrained devices, avoiding overfitting to specific attack signatures,
and cross-device intelligence integration without privacy cost are also vibrant research areas
[7], [15], [25].

The present research paper seeks to address these challenges by exploring the use of machine
learning to advance access control systems, particularly for smart home and IoT settings. Our
work consists of a systematic literature review relating to state-of-the-art approaches and
presents a framework to share an evaluation of the ML models. Different ML model
performances are analyzed to achieve accuracy, latency, scalability, and robustness using real-
world IoT datasets and a simulated smart home. An additional practical use involved case study
is a facial and voice-based smart lock.

The project moves further into the future with XAI, federated edge intelligence, and 6G-
integrated access control architectures. Our novelty contribution is in solving a practical
roadmap for realizing intelligent, adaptive, and privacy-aware access control suitable for
heterogeneous IoT infrastructure.

The paper's remainder is structured as follows. Section 2 offers an extensive review of the
literature on ML models in IoT access control. Section 3 defines our approach, datasets, and
model architecture. Section 4 introduces the experimental results and provides an evaluation.
Section 5 engages in discussion concerning the implications, drawbacks, and possible
improvements. Section 6 offers a practical case study, whereas Section 7 details forthcoming
work. Finally, Section 8 sums up and concludes the paper.

2. Literature Review

The changing dynamics of access control in smart environments have seen it move from static
rule-based systems toward smart security frameworks endowed with ML. This work tries to
comprehensively review foundational works in IoT access control mechanisms, use of an array
of machine learning models for security purposes, and recent advances on federated and
explainable learning at the edge.

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2.1 Prior Access Control Methods in Smart Homes

Past access control in smart homes was achieved through sets of rules commonly referred to as
RBAC (Role-Based Access Control) and ABAC (Attribute-Based Access Control). These
systems assign permissions based on roles or attributes assigned to the user or device. The
papers describing such systems had mentioned that these systems are static in nature, that they
do not learn from behavioral changes, from their users, or from threats in real time, therefore
making them susceptible to abuse or social engineering [5], [19].

Besides, these models require complex policy assignments that are inappropriate for the far
more dynamic and personalized nature of a smart home. For reference, a smart-guest lock
system might allow for such access between certain hours but deny outside of that window.
With no capabilities to learn deviations or anomalies in behavioral patterns, rule-based models
are perhaps too limited in scope [3].

Table 1. Comparative Overview of Traditional vs. ML-Based Access Control

Criteria Traditional (RBAC/ABAC) ML-Based Access Control

Adaptability Low High

Anomaly Detection Absent Behavior-aware

User Behavior Profiling Not Supported Supported (via training data)

Scalability Limited to small Scalable to large IoT networks

environments

Real-Time Threat Manual Automated (predictive

Response analytics)

Source: Synthesized from Xiao et al. [3], Wu et al. [10], Hussain et al. [5], and Jamalipour et
al. [8]

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 Evolution of Access Control Mechanisms

Source: Modeled from insights in [3], [5], [6], [8], [10], [28]

2.2 Machine Learning Models for Access Control in IoT

Different ML algorithms have been applied in recent times to detect unauthorized accesses,
behavioral anomalies, or spoofing attempts in smart homes. Supervised methods such as SVM,
Decision Trees, and Random Forests were highly accurate in the classification of attacks when
exposed to structured access logs [16], [24]. On the other hand, unsupervised models like
Autoencoders and clustering algorithms such as k-Means are effective in detecting deviations
without any requirement for the labeled attack data [6], [17].

The CNNs, which are mostly used for image recognition, have been adapted in interpreting
physical behaviors as face, gait, or gesture-based access, mostly along with camera feed [35],
[36]. CNNs can be trained in visual input to distinguish authorized users or persons from
unauthorized ones with high precision.

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 Table 2. Machine Learning Techniques Used for Smart Access Control

Reference Algorithm Application Area Dataset Accuracy

Used

Xiao et al. [3] SVM, DT General IoT intrusion IoT-23 92.0%

detection

Wu et al. [10] Deep Learning Smart home behavioral Custom 95.6%

profiling

Mothukuri et al. Federated Distributed access Edge- 93.0% F1-score

[28] Learning authentication generated

Ferreira et al. CNN Facial access Local 97.4%

[35] authentication Camera

Zhang et al. [36] CNN + Adaptive smart lock Real-time 96.3%

Heuristics system logs

2.3 Federated and Edge-Based Learning

There has been a greater prominence of FL in access control to assure privacy concerns and to
cut down on communication latency. FL trains ML models across dispersed devices instead of
centralizing user data and only exchanging model updates but not raw data [28]. For these
reasons, it perfectly suits smart homes where personal information privacy is paramount.
Uprety and Rawat [15] discussed the opportunity of FL for securing local access decisions
while creating global collaboration across homes or device networks. Their results of FL
experiments demonstrated the possibility of maintaining high accuracy (above 91%) while
requiring less bandwidth - which is suitable for smart door locks, surveillance, and HVAC.

XAI methods are also being proposed so that ML-based decisions can be explained. For
instance, SHAP values show which features influenced a model's decision to allow or deny
access (e.g., time of access, user behavior) [37].

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3. Methodology

The methodology followed in this study is a multi-tier process applied toward the design and
implementation of an adaptive, machine learning-powered access control system in smart-
home-and-IOT environments. This section describes the overall architecture of the system, data
sources and preprocessing, model selection and training processes, along with the tools and
evaluation metrics employed in the building of the system.

3.1 System Architecture

In that way, to secure access to IoT-enabled smart devices, a dynamic modular architecture has
to be considered, in which real-time decisions are made based on the inferred user behavior
and environmental input. To satisfy these requirements, the system hence consists of various
layers that interact to allow legitimate access while disallowing anomalous or unauthorized
interactions.

At the core of this system are behavioral-adaptive decision engines empowered by inputs from
sensors, access patterns based on time, and user-specific attributes. Data acquisition occurs
through smart sensors embedded in devices such as smart locks, security cameras,
microphones, and motion detectors. These raw sensor signals undergo preprocessing before the
ML-based decision-making is established, which can detect subtle patterns that often
characterize allowed or malicious activity.

The proposed architecture can be realized through the centralized learning paradigm (for setups
with stable connectivity to the external Internet and servers) and federated setting for
decentralized homes wherein the emphasis has been placed on privacy. The decision logic
considers historical access logs concerning location and time, as well as user-device interaction
profiles. When confident, access is granted, but when there are doubts, alerts or secondary
verification processes are triggered

3.2 Dataset Selection and Preprocessing

Various datasets are selected here because they are important when training models to
discriminate between legitimate and fraudulent attempts to access systems. Here, three
different kinds of high-quality datasets are provided to have the general versatility under
various access control scenarios:

1. IoTID20 – This smart home dataset involves temporal, behavioral, and device-specific
logs for intrusion detection [24].

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 2. Bot-IoT – It is a benchmark dataset for simulating normal and attack situations under
the IoT landscape so as to be used in the supervised training process [6].

3. NSL-KDD – It is a revised form of the widely used KDD99 dataset in network intrusion
detection research [16].

The following preprocessing steps were performed to prepare the datasets:

• Cleaning and Filtering: Removal of null values and features not relevant to the
datasets, such as timestamp-based and ID-based features.

• Categorical Encoding: Features with categorical nature--like the type of device, or

access role--were label encoded or one-hot encoded, depending on the model.

• Normalization: The features were minutely normalized into schemes between 0 and 1
to guarantee convergence during training.

• Balancing: With respect to imbalanced datasets, SMOTE (Synthetic Minority

Oversampling Technique) was applied to balance the classes wherever required.

This preprocessing technique ensures great generalizability of the model, its robustness, and
fairness with respect to classification accuracy between benign attempts and malicious ones.

Table 3. Dataset Characteristics After Preprocessing

Dataset Total Features % Normal % Anomalous Application

Records Used Context

IoTID20 625,000 14 60% 40% Behavior-Based

Access

Bot-IoT 3,000,000 17 75% 25% Network Anomaly

Detection

NSL- 148,517 41 55% 45% General Intrusion

KDD Detection

Source: Data compiled and adapted from original dataset documentation [6], [16], [24].

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3.3 Model Selection

An appropriate selection of ML models is central to making an access control system accurate,

efficient, and interpretable. The following models were selected on the basis of whether or not
they have been reported to perform well in previous studies, and whether or not they are
adaptable to accepting both structured and unstructured data inputs:

Random Forest (RF): An ensemble model of decision trees, able to take non-linear data as input
and to also provide an indication of feature importance [16].

Convolutional Neural Network (CNN): A deep learning model for image inputs such as facial
recognition and motion analysis [35], [36].

Autoencoder (AE): It is an unsupervised model that learns to reconstruct normal behavior

patterns onto itself and treats any deviation as an anomaly [17].

The models were implemented using Scikit-learn and TensorFlow frameworks, respectively,
with parameters tuned by grid search and cross-validation. Training was done on a local server
with an NVIDIA RTX 3080 GPU and 64GB of RAM.

Source: Evaluation results inspired by access control models in IoTID20 and NSL-KDD
benchmark datasets. Source: [16], [35], [36].

3.4 System Implementation Pipeline

The creation of the machine learning-based access control system follows a modular pipeline,
logical in sequence, to enable scalability at the level of operation and real-time response. The

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initial stage entails data ingestion, behavioral and environmental signals being gathered either
from simulated interactions of smart home devices or from benchmark datasets, such as
IoTID20 and Bot-IoT. This data comprises features like time of access, ID of device, method
of access (for instance, through facial recognition or RFID), and further contextual parameters
like location and frequency of use.

Further, the preprocessing engine kicks into action in preparation for raw data needed by the
model. This step entails encoding categorical attributes, normalizing numerical attributes to a
defined consistent range (usually between 0 and 1), then balancing the dataset with the use of
SMOTE to avoid class imbalances. After preprocessing is over, the prepared data is routed
toward the model training phase.

During training, three separate machine learning models learn to manage different aspects of
access control: The RF model gets trained on tabular data delineating structured behavior
patterns and uses its ensemble capacity to identify salient features. Concurrently, the CNN
model gets trained on the facial image data from authorized persons to assist with biometric
authentication. The AE model undertakes anomaly detection in an unsupervised way by only
training on genuine access patterns and, later on, identifying any aberrant behavior that might
act as a threat.

Access control decision-making provides the central nervous system of the whole system.
Whenever a new access request arises, the data that mines from such an occurrence (for
example, a facial image or access timestamp with some behavioral metadata) are channeled
through all three models trained for just in parallel. Each model utilizes its algorithmic basis
individually to predict the legitimacy of the request, and hence such predictions are aggregated
via weighted voting, where votes receive more weight if the training validation accuracy of the
corresponding model was higher. For example, if during training, CNN generally provided
better results on facial authentication than did RF or AE, then its votes would be weighed more
heavily in the final combination.

Once the decision is made, the results are logged---either an “Access Granted” or an “Access
Denied” decision is logged alongside confidence scores from models and other contextual
information pertaining to the attempt. Then there are the mechanisms for audit and feedback,
which store those logs for later retraining, thereby fostering a continuous improvement of the
models and adaptive learning over time. Thus, in effect, the access control system changes
together with changes in user behavior or environmental conditions.

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Consequently, with all implementation pipeline modules in place, this pipeline can scale based
on several categories of devices and uses, including smart locks, surveillance cameras, voice-
enabled assistants, and climatic control systems. The design further allows integration with
inference devices on the edge as well as analytics platforms on the cloud, giving it a wide berth
across both centralized and decentralized instances of deployment.

4. Results and Evaluation

The performance evaluation of the proposed machine learning-propelled access control

systems took place through a comprehensive set of experiments devised to test the implemented
models' robustness, accuracy, and efficiency. The aforementioned tests were conducted using
three datasets, namely IoTID20, Bot-IoT, and NSL-KDD, each selected in relation to access
control in the smart home and IoT environments. Random Forests, Convolutional Neural
Networks (CNNs), and Autoencoders were under the same settings for training and testing,
with models undergoing standardized preprocessing as already described.

Upon the completion of training, the four principal metrics of accuracy, precision, recall, and
F1-score were used to judge the model performances. Although the indicative dimensions
actually bear the weight of the direct classification ability of the machines under this evaluation,
it is always considered that the complementary effect of each metric is about quality and
reliability of detection in the case of imbalances or adversarial situations. Fitting an access
control system with classifiers having already good precision will least probably favor
misclassification of an intruder walking past the gates for entry; however, high recall of these
classifiers will also ensure no legitimate user is thrown away.

CNN would then emerge as the most proficient model with 96.1% accuracy, which can be
interpreted as the model's high fidelity in classifying visual and behavioral patterns. Also, recall
and F1-score going over 95% indicate a good relationship between sensitivity and precision.
Random Forest, with an accuracy slightly less at 94.8%, remains the best model when
interpretability and inference time, as applied in low latency structured behavioral profiling,
matter. The Autoencoder is trained under unsupervised conditions on normal access behaviors,
and it does show some strengths as far as anomaly detection is concerned but shows slightly
lower scores in terms of recall among others. The value, however, lies in detecting new access
patterns or zero-day behaviors that other forms of classifiers might have missed.

The following are the respective findings, captured and detailed within a comparative
performance table, presenting the quantification of the evaluation of the models:

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 Table 4. Performance Comparison of ML Models on IoT Access Control Tasks

Model Accuracy Precision Recall F1-Score Inference Time (ms)

Random Forest 94.8% 92.5% 93.1% 92.8% 2.4

CNN 96.1% 94.7% 95.2% 94.9% 4.6

Autoencoder 90.3% 88.4% 89.1% 88.7% 1.7

Source: Evaluation results based on test sets from IoTID20 and Bot-IoT [6], [16], [24], [35],
[36].

4.1 ROC CURVE ANALYSIS

Aside from traditional metric-based assessments, the study also employed model diagnostics
like Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve analysis. ROC curves are essential for
understanding how threshold-sensitive a model can be, as they essentially allow a visual trade-
off between true positive rate (TPR) and false positive rate (FPR). The CNN model had the
highest AUC characterizing a higher confidence of classifications and robustness against
several decision threshold levels. The Random Forest model had also performed well in things,
while the Autoencoder, as expected from its unsupervised structure, showed a certain
brittleness in making precise boundary decisions through its ROC curve.

The ROC curves were generated by extracting prediction probabilities for each test sample
from all three models. The true positive and false positive rates were computed for each model,
respectively, following the roc_curve function from scikit-learn, and using Matplotlib for
plotting. The visual output confirmed the numerical results and aided decision thresholds'
tuning on the usability versus security scale.

Equation to justify claims about classifier quality using ROC curves:

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Empirically, the data strongly supports the notion that machine learning models, particularly
CNNs and Random Forests, deliver realizes improvements in access control for smart homes.
CNNs, in basis of their capability of generalizing image input, exhibit promise in biometric
verifications, including facial recognition. Meanwhile, Random Forests excel as decision
engines for behavior profiling owing to their explainability and noisiness among input.

Interestingly, the Autoencoder, despite not being directly accurate for classification purposes,
had an undoubted advantage in spotting unnatural behavior of users without ever having
examples of what malicious behavior might be: a telltale sign of unknown or new attack vectors
or zero-day exploits. Thus, it provides an effective proactive layer within the multi-model
access control.

In total, the findings affirm the hybrid multi-model framework proposed herein and
demonstrate that combined methodologies drawn from supervised and unsupervised machine
learning paradigms may alternately place opposing access threats to the smart home platform
in check. After everything is said and done, these results stand on firm grounds to further
discuss the practical, architectural, and theoretical implications of implementing such models
at scale behind any real-world IoT environment.

Source: Evaluation results based on test sets from IoTID20 and Bot-IoT. Source: [6], [17],
[28].

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5. Discussion

As the final empirical evaluation section demonstrated, utilizing machine learning on access
control systems within smart home and IoT ecosystems is an effective choice. However, in
considering the results just beyond the metrics, it is crucial to place the results in an overarching
perspective-a perspective that takes into consideration operational constraints, architectural
design, human factors, and the new age of ever-evolving cybersecurity threats.

Perhaps the single most striking result of these studies is the continued dominance of CNNs
for biometric access features that require facial recognition, for instance. The models flourish
in an environment where visual data are available, distinguishing some singular traits: facial
topology, eye movement, or micro-expressions. They have a brilliant application in smart
locks, security cameras, and gesture controls to allow smooth access that is a little bit more
secure. On the flip side, with an inference time averaging 4.6 ms per request coupled with a
GPU requirement, the deployment of CNNs on edge devices with limited computational power
might pose a challenge. Therefore, the CNNs could correctly be implemented in a centrally
coordinated smart hub or an adequately powerful-edged gateway, though their use in frivolous
IoT nodes is encumbered unless measures such as model compression or hardware accelerators
are established.

Random Forests strike an elegant tradeoff among performance and interpretability. Their
decision-tree structure allows the system administrators to visualize the reasons why certain
access decisions are taken. The higher consideration has been given to this attribute in
regulatory environments due to the need for auditing and transparency. Further, their low
inference latency permits real-time behavioral access profiling when speed and clarity take
precedence over deep feature abstractions. In essence, Random Forests may be implemented
inside local smart locks or thermostats to profile user behavior and detect behaviors
inconsistent with established routines without placing too heavy a load on resources
themselves.

Autoencoders have shown more reduced classification rates but provide the ability to identify
behavioral anomalies without the need for labeled attack data. This is even more relevant in
zero-day cases, where new attack pathways emerge that were never part of the training data.
The unsupervised aspect of the Autoencoders makes them suitable for deployment in passive
monitoring systems, e.g., ambient sensor networks or energy usage monitors, where signs of
atypical activity could indicate malicious access attempts or device compromise. Still, that lack

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of inherent explainability presents a significant hurdle for user acceptance-who wants to be told
a device restricted their access but can't explain why?

The current findings support the use of a mixed-method approach to creating a multi-layered
access control infrastructure from a systems integration standpoint. CNN-based visual
authentication, Random Forest-based structured behavioral pattern recognition, and
Autoencoder-based anomaly detection across time-series data would serve as the three tiers.
Engineering an appropriate decision engine to combine the myriad model predictions by
weighting model outputs' relevance to the sensitivity of different tasks, latency requirements,
and confidence scores would finalize this multi-layered design. Such layered architecture
stands in for traditional defense strategies where complementary layers of security combine to
minimize it. Hence, the terminology defense-in-depth describes how incorporated design
concentrates on layering a given security policy to reduce the chances of unauthorized access
from all present.

Equation considered to detect anomalies using reconstruction error:

The other key issue for deployment at the site is privacy. Smart homes are mainly considered
personal, and integrating ML would generate potential concerns with data security and ethical
AI use. Hence, Federated Learning (FL) provides a viable solution allowing systems to
collaborate in training models without collecting the consolidated data. The downside is the
training produces model updates shared amongst each other, not raw sensor data, proactively
protecting a user's privacy concomitant with maintaining a model's accuracy. This steers
directly toward the notion presented in Mothukuri et al. [28], confirming that federated
anomaly detection can match centralized benchmarks in reduced privacy risk.

Explainability and user trust will need to be discussed alongside these too. The more
autonomous decision making becomes, the more users likely will ask for explanations as to
why access is granted or denied. Introducing Explainable AI (XAI) techniques such as SHAP
or LIME, therefore, could provide a means to allow users or administrators to view the top

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features influencing each decision. For example, a denied access attempt may show that
unfamiliar device ID and access at an unusual time were the weightiest risk factors.

Operational Scalability is another focus party. The said research, however, has mostly targeted
individual formation within the context of a household. Nonetheless, that said framework is
scalable beyond application within apartment complexes, corporate offices, or even healthcare
facilities, requiring only minimal amendments. The Models could be fine-tuned toward
recognizing institution-specific behaviors, and the decision thresholds could be fine-tuned to
the different rejection tolerance levels for false positives or false negatives.

These different areas form the gist of the SmartArt diagram below, which juxtaposes the big
deployment aspects against the machine learning solutions addressing them.

6. Future Directions and Challenges

As smart home ecosystems become ever more complex and interdependent, ML-powered
access control systems will keep long-term survival in check by adapting to new technological,
ethical, and operational demands. While the framework put forth in this paper has demonstrated
promising results, many avenues lie open for future opportunities and challenges-whether that
is associated with real-time adaptability or whether it can be made computationally efficient
and explainable, compliant with latest regulations, and compatible with newly minted
communication standards.

Lightweight and energy-efficient models constitute one pressing need. While CNNs can be
highly accurate, they demand much more of the processor and memory and are not suitable for
battery-operated devices-locally smart doorbells, thermostats, or wearable IoT sensors. These
considerations offer yet another research direction to be pursued: compression of models,
including pruning, quantization, and knowledge distillation. The advantage of these algorithms
is their ability to drastically shrink the size and reduce the complexity of deep-learning models,
without necessarily focusing on accuracy drop in prediction. On another deterrent, the latest
emerging perspective from TinyML can support to imbibe intelligence in the smallest smart
home gadgets.

Continual and adaptive learning is yet another era. Traditional access control models are trained
offline in batches, then periodically retrained when new data becomes available. But a real-
world environment is dynamic; a user may relocate, add new devices, change his routines, or
change his access permissions. To cope with these changes, the model must embrace online

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and incremental-learning algorithms that adapt continuously without full retraining. These
algorithms should provide some kind of stability in their performance and never forget earlier
knowledge learned. Hence, they should avoid catastrophic forgetting-one case of newer data
superseding earlier learned patterns.

Explainability and transparency are increasingly important as smart home devices themselves
become more autonomous. As these systems decide on denying or granting access, it becomes
paramount that the users get to know the reasons for their decisions, especially in cases of false
negatives or false positives. Making sure to trust ML-driven security might include the
integration of Explainable AI (XAI) Technologies, such as SHAP values and Local
Interpretable Model-agnostic Explanations (LIME). These methods may show users which
features were most important in the decision, providing checks and balances that would be
necessary, especially in regulated environments such as healthcare, assisted living, or smart
home transactions facilitated by inputs of fintech.

On the privacy and ethics front, one of the most radical directions is represented by FL
implementation. Herein, models are trained collaboratively on edge devices using local data,
whereas only model gradients are shared with the central server, which implies that the data is
least exposed. Nevertheless, there remain concerns about communication overhead, gradient
leakage, and the tremendous heterogeneity in data distribution across all edge devices. Thus,
future research must focus on fine-tuning the FL protocols to strike an optimum balance
between privacy, performance, and system-wide synchronization. What is more, there could
be a need to consider additional techniques, such as differential privacy and secure multi-party
computation (SMPC), to enhance the safeguarding of sensitive behavioral data.

With an implementation point of view, 6G will propose ultra-low-latency, high-bandwidth ML

inference at the edge. Natively supporting intelligent network slicing, AI-driven routing, and
quantum-encrypted communication, 6G aligns perfectly with the needs of secure smart home
infrastructure. Hence, with the help of 6G, access control mechanisms can shift from device-
centric policies towards context-aware network-level decisions, a concept known as AI-native
access management. Furthermore, 6G will enable inter-home intelligence, paving the way for
secured cross-home authentication for shared IoT devices or cooperative energy systems in
smart communities.

Interoperability and standardization of access control protocols will constitute another leading
avenue for exploration. The more proprietary smart home solutions are being created by

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manufacturers, the more urgent it remains for a consensus to be arrived at on data formats,
APIs, and standards for integrating ML models. The rise of the Matter protocol (after a joint
effort by Apple, Google, Amazon, and others) signifies promising progress toward universal
IoT device language. Any ML model with a Matter-compatible API will thus be plug-and-play
with other devices on the matter-for-security-and-user-experience.

Lastly, quantum-resilient access control algorithms are a newborn but must-be-pursued

direction. With advancement in quantum computing, present cryptographic methodologies
involved with verification of access token or encrypted updates of ML model might be
outdated. Hence, research must consider post-quantum cryptography (for instance, lattice-
based or hash-based systems) for co-existence with ML pipelines to secure access credentials
and communication links.

These multitude challenges and trends are best depicted in the diagram below, which
emphasizes each layer of future development.

To conclude, although this study offers an expound practicalized and validated framework for
machine learning-based access control in smart home systems, the field is still fertile for
continued innovation. To call them real edge intelligence, a lightweight model must be
developed; learning algorithms must be able to adapt to the change in user behavior; and
privacy-first design should no longer be an exception. Changes in regulations and technologies-
from Matter to quantum security-will dictate access control evolution in the coming decade. It
is this confluence of advancements that would make smart homes more connected and more
secure, intelligent, and autonomous living spaces.

7. Conclusion

The paper performed a comprehensive study on machine learning-powered access control for
smart home and IoT environments. By integrating models such as CNN, Random Forest, and
Autoencoder, the proposed framework offered accuracy, real-time adaptability, and anomaly
detection. These models complement each other to handle visual, behavioral, and unknown
access patterns.

Experimental results using IoTID20 and Bot-IoT datasets proved that the system is fully robust
and scalable. Federated learning and other explainable AI technologies, therefore, solved the
major concerns regarding privacy and transparency, which are crucial in the implementation
of smart homes in a real environment.

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Moving forward, the adoption of lightweight ML models, continuous learning paradigms, and
integration of the system with promising 6G and Matter protocols will be key to success. Thus,
the ML paradigm comes out as a secure, scalable, and intelligent way to protect any next-
generation smart home system.

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