Making Effective Home Security Available to Everyone - Towards Smart Home Security Communities

The Internet of Things significantly reduces the prices of home security systems, thereby making home security available to everyone. Prior research provides the technical foundation for Smart Home security. However, frequent false alarms still remain a severe challenge. While current work in this domain mainly focuses on the improvement of sensors and algorithms, this study proposes a semi-automatic approach to tackle the false positives. It combines the concept of neighborhood watch communities with IoT technology in order to develop a Smart Home security community. Therefore, (1) this paper shows a positive influence of community features in the case of non-intrusive devices. Furthermore, (2) it points out the influence of personal relationships on perceived security. In consequence, there is a clear opportunity to strengthen security systems by establishing neighborhood watch communities.