Ciphertext-Policy Attribute-Based Encryption (CP-ABE) cropped up as an eminent cryptographic paradigm to enforce fine-grained access control over data sharing in an environment such as cloud computing, healthcare systems, and the Internet of Things (IoT). However, traditional CP-ABE schemes suffer from limitations in scalability, user revocation, and dynamic policy updates, especially in large-scale distributed settings. To get rid of these limitations, enhanced versions have been considered, such as Multi-Authority Ciphertext-Policy Attribute-Based Encryption (MA-CP-ABE) and Hierarchical Attribute-Based Encryption (HCP-ABE), which are often intermingled with blockchain technology, proxy re-encryption, and fog computing. This exhaustive review aims to analyze and survey a wide assortment of advances in various dimensions, including security features, scalability, policy flexibility, and computational efficiency. An extensive comparison and performance analysis of existing schemes is conducted to reveal their strengths and trade-offs, supported by quantitative metrics such as execution time, memory consumption, and latency. The major findings reveal that hybrid CP-ABE models—particularly those combining CP-ABE with blockchain or fog computing enhance access control performance and resilience while reducing computation on resource-constrained devices. Among these, the MH-ABE by Roy et al. (2024) and the blockchain + SMPC scheme by Qiao et al. (2025) demonstrated the best balance between security and dynamic policy management. © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.