Store hundreds of emails in MySQL database encrypted?

Question

I need to store large number of emails in a MySQL database for mailing list management.

I would like to store these emails encrypted with Ruby on Rails making the storage safer.

What would be the options to encrypt email addresses with the option to decrypt them also?

Im already using Devise Gem and they use some sort of salt and key to decrypt.

Any thoughts on how this could be implemented best?

Answer 1

You could encrypt the email column in your MySQL database. You don't need SALT for encryption; it is only useful when it's used by hash functions.