A Systematic Review of Secure and Scalable IoT Frameworks for Smart Environmental Monitoring

The rapid advancement of the Internet of Things (IoT) has significantly enhanced smart environmental monitoring by enabling real-time, large-scale data collection and analysis. IoT-based monitoring systems are widely applied in areas such as air and water quality monitoring, climate observation, and disaster management. However, the large-scale deployment of heterogeneous IoT devices introduces critical challenges related to security, scalability, data integrity, and efficient resource management. Addressing these challenges is essential to ensure reliable and trustworthy environmental monitoring systems. This paper presents a systematic review of secure and scalable IoT frameworks for smart environmental monitoring. A comprehensive analysis of existing literature from major scientific databases is conducted to examine prevailing IoT architectures, communication technologies, security mechanisms, and scalability strategies. Key security approaches, including authentication, encryption, access control, and blockchain-based solutions, are reviewed alongside scalability techniques such as edge computing, cloud-based architectures, and lightweight communication protocols. The review synthesizes current research trends, provides a comparative analysis of existing frameworks, and identifies limitations and open research challenges. Furthermore, potential future research directions are discussed, emphasizing the need for energy-efficient security solutions, interoperability, privacy preservation, and intelligent data analytics. This study aims to support researchers and practitioners in designing robust, secure, and scalable IoT-based environmental monitoring systems.