Information security is considered one of the most important issues in various infrastructures related to the field of data communication where most of the modern studies focus on finding effective and low-weight secure approaches. Digital watermarking is a trend in security techniques that hides data by using data embedding and data extraction processes. Watermarking technology is integrated into different frames without adding an overheard as in the conventional encryption. Therefore, it is efficient to be used in data encryption for applications that run over limited resources such as the Internet of Things (IoT). In this paper, different digital watermarking algorithms and approaches are presented. Additionally, watermarking requirements and challenges are illustrated in detail. Moreover, the common architecture of the watermarking system is described. Furthermore, IoT technology and its challenges are highlighted. Finally, the paper provides the motivations, objectives and applications of the recent secure watermarking techniques in IoT and summarises them into one table. In addition, the paper highlights the potential to apply the modified watermark algorithms to secure IoT networks.