Absolutely. Home-brewed solutions tend to end up like CipherTextI. In the past, I've used a fairly simple system that I described in a previous thread, Administration Ignorance. In that example, I use Crypt::RC4, though there are any number of other quality encryption modules that you could use in its place. In addition to Crypt::RC4 and the two modules mentioned by moodster, I'd also suggest Crypt::Rijndael and Crypt::Blowfish. All of these modules are easy to use and relatively fast.
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Kurt