Abstract—With IoT systems proliferating rapidly across smart cities, healthcare, energy, transport and industry the need for sustainable cybersecurity by design is critical. But prior studies usually consider energy efficiency, environmental sustainability and security as separate aspects, without unified cross-layer analytical models. Following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) methodology, this paper provides a systematic literature review (2018–2025) and is substantiated by bibliometric analysis to assess validation maturity, research trends and distribution across domains. The contributions are threefold. First, a Sustainability Interaction Model (SIM) is proposed that embeds interdependencies of energy efficiency, carbon footprint, stringency of cybersecurity, and level of AI intelligence including edge–fog–cloud orchestration effects across the system lifecycle. Second, a repeatable evaluation framework is presented with measurable sustainability Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) such as Energy-per-bit (Ebit), Energy-per-inference (Einf), Lifecycle Assessment (LCA) and carbon intensity metrics. Third, a sustainability-aware threat prioritization matrix and energy–security trade-off model is devised considering Internet of Things (IoT) design as a multi-objective optimization problem that minimizes energy consumption, carbon emission, and cyber risk. The analysis pinpoints some key gaps in lifecycle quantification and real-world validation. Finally, we propose phased sustainability–security roadmaps according to feasibility and readiness for deployment, thereby bringing IoT research closer towards composite systems by design with analytical foundations.

Keywords—Internet of Things (IoT), sustainable IoT, energy-efficient IoT, cybersecurity, smart environments, edge–fog–cloud computing, green computing, artificial Intelligence for IoT

Cite: Nada Mohammed Hassan Moter, Zainab Marid Alzamili, Muhanad Muslim Abdulridha, Mahmood A. Al-Shareeda, Mohammed Amin, and Rami Shihab, “Review of Energy-Efficient, Cyber-Secure, and Sustainable Internet of Things for Smart Environments," Journal of Communications, vol. 21, no. 3, pp. 448-467, 2026.

Copyright © 2026 by the authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (CC BY 4.0).