This survey paper thoroughly examines the landscape of access control within the context of the Internet of Things (IoT). With the rapid expansion of IoT technologies, ensuring secure access to resources and data has become a critical concern. We thus present a very wide-ranging review of existing literature, doing an all-round analysis of current access control mechanisms in order to discuss their strengths, weaknesses, and applicability to IoT environments. The result of our investigation shows few major gaps and challenges, such as issues of scalability, interoperability concerns, and a call for access policies that account for contexts. Taking this into account, we introduce new approaches and improvements to positively address these shortcomings and boost the security and efficiency of access control in IoT systems. By integrating findings from multi study research endeavors, we provide new points of view and approaches toward IoT security improvement. Furthermore, we present potential future research directions and challenges to guide development for more resilient and adaptive access control solutions in IoT ecosystems. The paper is a ready reference for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers who want to bolster the security posture of IoT deployments and mitigate newly emerging cyber threats effectively.