[Mpls-pm] Secure scripts question

[Miner, Alan G]

The basic question is: Is there a better way to secure passwords in
scripts?

We have many perl and ksh scripts that do many things (Unix and Win).
They call applications and must provide security credentials in that
batch process. The credentials are kept in a file that only the
user/group can read, and the passwords themselves are encrypted within
that file. 

We would like to make the scripts "pure" perl, but the rub is that the
crypto keys for the passwords have to be stored somewhere easily
accessible.

Does anyone have a more secure (yet workable) architecture/framework
than this?

I have searched various sites, blogs and archives and it always seems to
boil down to where to store the encryption keys.

Thanks!
Alan