A linker or loader, and associated method, is described, whereby the application of security transformations to object-code modules can be deferred until link or load-time, through, for example, memory relocation, selection from diverse instances of a module, and late-binding of constants. This provides several benefits over conventional source-to-source security transformations. These deferred security transformations can be applied in a very light-weight manner and create many opportunities for diversity in the resulting executable program, enhancing security, while at the same time minimizing the impact on execution performance and correctness, and reducing the complexity of debugging.