We present a prospective study for performance comparison between programs written in C language and the same programs reviewed and modified to be compliant with CMU SEI CERT C Secure Coding Standard and with MISRA C, the most relevant Secure Coding Standards in existence nowadays. Our initial results show that, as expected, any of the Secure Coding Standards is susceptible to have a negative impact on performance, increasing program running time. We have also found that MISRA C Standard may be less likely to affect code performance than SEI CERT C Standard is, and that it may produce a more optimal code than SEI CERT Standard does; however, further research is needed for proper confirmation of these results
