Pando,

For passwords it is much more advisable to store them "hashed", not encripted. This has many advantages over encryption, and btw this is also the way Oracle stores passwords in a database. For further details how to implement your own "hashing" function follow this URL:

[url]http://asktom.oracle.com/pls/ask/f?p=4950:8:::::F4950_P8_DISPLAYID:95412348059[/url]

If you realy want to encrypt data in a table column, you can use dbms_obfuscation_toolkit package (from 8.1.6 onwards, I think). If you want a simple and easy-to-understand explanaiton how to implement encryption/decryption with this package take a look at:

[url]http://asktom.oracle.com/pls/ask/f?p=4950:8:3781::NO::F4950_P8_DISPLAYID[/url],F4950_P8_CRITERIA:791026226790,{dbms_obfuscation}

HTH,