That is why Lima Groupe exists. That is why LIMA SHIELD exists.
We did not start with a technology in search of a market. We started from what we saw on the ground, as people who have spent our working lives protecting people and places: every year, offenders become more professional in their methods, while security systems have been doing the same thing for thirty years. Detect. Alert. Wait.
“Protection is not just about seeing and alerting. It is about ending an intrusion as fast as possible. We built LIMA SHIELD to close exactly that gap.” Cédric Fontaine, founder of Lima Groupe
An award-winning French innovation: Audience Award at the Nuit de la Sécurité Globale (Républik Group).
LIMA SHIELD did not come out of an isolated lab. It was born within Lima Groupe, a French integrated security group founded in 2022, whose teams have backgrounds in the army, the police and private security. The group protects people, families and organisations across the three dimensions of modern risk: physical, digital and technological.
This structure reflects a reality on the ground: threats no longer come one at a time. A home intrusion often starts with a post online. A business trip becomes sensitive because information has leaked. A company is targeted through both its premises and its data. Handling these risks separately leaves the blind spots untouched.
Five entities, one leadership, teams that work in concert.
This is the group's original core business, and where everything else began. The teams support executives, public figures and families, in France and abroad: risk assessment, close protection, sensitive transport and transfers, event security, security audits. It is from these assignments that the observations behind LIMA SHIELD emerged, because it is these same teams who see, year after year, what is missing between the alarm going off and help arriving.
Erasing digital traces, protecting online footprints, counter-espionage: this division handles the digital side of risk, for individuals and businesses alike. Its role in the product's story is direct. A protection device controlled from a phone becomes a target if its software is weak, and it is this in-house expertise that made it possible to carry out a cybersecurity audit of LIMA SHIELD and encrypt its communications, so that no third party can take control of it remotely.
This division provides vehicles suited to the group's protection services: Mercedes GLE, a converted V-Class and a Yamaha Tracer 9 GT. It is not a stand-alone rental business; it is the mobility link in a protection set-up. Journeys are often the most exposed moment of the day, and they call for vehicles and drivers chosen with that in mind.
The sound shield, the group's proprietary technology, born in the field. It is the only entity that makes a product rather than delivering a service, and that is what sets it apart: the experience of thousands of hours of human protection turned into a machine, able to hold a site when no team is present.
Attached to Lima Protection, whose seal it shares, this entity handles vulnerability audits and ongoing follow-up with dedicated contacts. It is the entity that ties the others together: it anticipates, coordinates and ensures that physical, digital and technological protections respond as one, rather than in isolation.
Executives and entrepreneurs, families and family offices, the luxury industry, public figures and content creators, institutions and diplomats, tourism and logistics operators. They are joined by profiles that emerged with the new economies: companies in the crypto world, targeted by a form of crime that has specialised in just a few years, and tech groups and artificial intelligence companies whose value lies in research that needs protecting. Coverage is national and international, from the Middle East to Latin America, with operational deployment within 24 hours.
This practice led to a simple conviction: you cannot put a guard behind every person or in front of every door. Human protection is irreplaceable, but it is also limited in numbers, time and budget. What was needed was a tool able to hold the ground when nobody is there.
Before writing a single line of specifications, we reviewed everything that existed: alarms, video surveillance, remote monitoring, security fog, light-based devices. Plenty of decent solutions, almost all of them passive, and the few active ones all shared the same flaw: they work at the price of a serious side effect, whether a residue to clean up, lost visibility or a risk of injury.
The way forward came from digging into the acoustics literature. Research into sound as a means of deterrence began during the Second World War. From the 1960s to the 1980s, DARPA and NASA studied directional acoustic beams and their physiological effects in depth. From 2003, the LRAD was fitted to ships, bases and embassies. On the civilian side, though, almost nothing: fifty years of research left on the doorstep of homes, shops and local authorities.
Our work was to bring this technology through that door, redesigning it entirely for civilian use: adjustable intensity, adjustable emission time, warning beeps before any activation, automatic shut-off. A deterrent tool, not miniaturised military equipment.
“Derived from military technology adapted for civilian use, this non-lethal acoustic deterrent device integrates with any existing alarm system.” Républik Group, La Nuit de la Sécurité Globale
An acoustic deterrent device is not a product you can assemble with a single skill set. It meant bringing around the same table disciplines that rarely talk to each other: six workstreams run in parallel, any one of which could have sunk the product.
Designing the signal itself: the frequency band, the modulation that prevents habituation, the propagation through a real space with its reflections and materials. This is what separates a powerful siren from a sound shield, and it is the part that took the most iterations, measurement after measurement, room after room. See the science in detail.
High-density piezoelectric transducers, thermal management able to handle the emission, a battery and its power electronics, a chassis that resists dust, moisture and attempts to tear it off. It took seasoned hardware and electronics engineers, with backgrounds in defence and industry, to fit all of this into a seven-kilo unit.
A modern security device is a connected object: mobile app, real-time notifications, 4G backup, remote updates, integration with alarm control panels and pairing of several units. This whole system was developed to the same standard as the hardware, because a protective product has to stay simple to operate on a night when panic sets in.
A LIMA SHIELD means 54 components to select, source and assemble: transducers, circuit boards, infrared and thermal sensors, battery, aluminium chassis, waterproof connectors, each from a recognised brand and validated one by one. Then comes the move from handmade prototype to series production: finding industrial partners able to maintain that standard, and keeping individual checks on every unit.
This is the one point where we could leave nothing to chance. A protection device controlled remotely becomes a target if its digital side is weak. The entire product has undergone a cybersecurity audit and its communications are encrypted, with one clear goal: that no third party can take control of it remotely. This is also what the group's cyber unit brings us.
A deterrent device is designed with the law, not after it. Lawyers specialising in new technologies have supported us at every stage, and we work in ongoing dialogue with the regulator and law enforcement. It is this work that led to the warning beeps, the time delay and the automatic shut-off. The full legal framework is set out here.
Nearly €1 million has been invested in research and development, and the first LIMA SHIELD units were handmade in our Strasbourg workshop: every board, every assembly, every acoustic test. That is where the product took its final shape, prototype after prototype.
This choice has a cost and a reason. The cost is that of French engineering. The reason is that the design, acoustics and software of a security device cannot be outsourced: they must stay with those who answer for them. French technology, designed by French engineers, for users who want to know who built the machine in their home.
The product complies with European CE standards, among the strictest in the world, and each unit carries a serial number that follows it throughout its life. The full regulatory framework is set out here.
In 2025, LIMA SHIELD received the Audience Award at the Nuit de la Sécurité Globale, organised by Républik Group. The evening took place on 22 September 2025, at the Théâtre de la Madeleine in Paris, in front of more than 800 safety and security professionals: the second edition under this name, after eighteen years of the Trophées de la Sécurité.
The rest of the winners' list shows the calibre of the room. In the “Security projects and large companies” category, first prize went to SNCF for its work on women's safety across its premises, and second prize to the GIGN, for the “boat marshal” concept that secured the 104 boats of the Paris Olympic Games opening parade. Those prizes are awarded by a jury, after each candidate has presented in person.
The Audience Award, on the other hand, does not come from the jury: it is decided by the professionals' vote. For a product with no sales history at the time, it was the first sign from outside that the idea stood up.
We do not read more into it than it says: it is recognition from the profession, not a technical certification.
Going from a handmade prototype to a product you can ship is an industrial journey, and we are right in the middle of it. We had to find industrial partners able to produce in small runs first, with the level of quality control this kind of device demands: functional tests, acoustic tests and battery checks on every unit before shipping.
Handmade in our Strasbourg workshop, board by board and assembly by assembly, then tested, corrected and retested until the signal, battery life and robustness delivered on their promise. It is this phase that absorbed most of the nearly one million euros invested in research and development, and it is what gave the product its final shape.
Today we produce in limited runs. The product has been validated by its first customers, demand exceeds supply, and we run on a just-in-time basis: stock often runs out, and production of a run takes 4 to 8 weeks.
That is our course for the years ahead: increasing our production capacity without compromising on individual checks or French design. Demand is already there, often for volumes our current runs cannot yet supply.
We would rather say so plainly than suggest stock is unlimited: if the device is in stock when you order it, that is the moment to buy.
To reduce the impact of intrusions and assaults on people and property, by providing an active response where conventional systems stop.
This requires two things we never lose sight of. The first: protecting people before property. The device is designed to make intruders flee quickly, without contact and without direct confrontation, because the worst-case scenario in an intrusion is not theft, it is coming face to face.
The second: knowing our place. LIMA SHIELD is not a substitute for law enforcement, and it is not meant for taking the law into your own hands. It is a regulated protection tool that warns, acts for a limited time, then stops. It makes intruders flee; it is not designed to injure.
And because innovation in our line of work demands caution as much as boldness, we work with specialised lawyers and in ongoing dialogue with the regulator and law enforcement. This work is documented on the page dedicated to the legal framework.
A French device: built-in detection or connection to your existing system, warning beeps, then a sound of 86 to 138 decibels, calibrated to the 2 to 5 kHz band and modulated to prevent any habituation. The area becomes unbearable and triggers a flight reflex. Without contact, without substances, without confrontation.
“This device is already attracting interest from individuals and businesses, but also from institutional and military players, in France and internationally.” Le Figaro, July 2026
Jewellers, tobacconists, luxury boutiques, car dealerships, warehouses, town halls and police stations are already among the first to have bought or pre-ordered.
LIMA SHIELD is produced in limited runs and is regularly out of stock.
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