Take a look at Re: Which is safer hashing or encrypting? Message #765843.

>Hi All,
>
>Anyone know of a good, tight little OCX (or other class library) that offers 'robust' encryption like DES? The application here will pass sensitive data over an 'open' Internet connection via ODBC (to a mySQL d/b) and I need to have the data strongly encrypted and then read from the d/b and unencrypted on the other side by Perl and PHP scripts. So, something that uses certs would be ideal but pass-phrase based encryption would probably be ok too. I suppose I'm looking for something that would be 'compatible' with "mcrypt.so" for PHP, or one of Crypt::DES, Crypt::Blowfish or Crypt::RSA for Perl. Any suggestions welcomed including commercial solicitations.
>
>-Arne