How to save SSH credentials secure in database?

Question

I have a PHP script which connects via SFTP to servers to get data from there. That's a necessary thing for my project.

But how to store the credentials to this servers in my MYSQL-database? I don't want to store a SSH-password as plaintext, but I nearly have to, because otherwise the script can't connect? Is this true or is there another, secure way?

Snippet of my script:

while($row = mysqli_fetch_assoc($servers)) {
  $srvip = $row["ip"];
  $srvuser = $row["user"];
  $srvpassword = $row["password"];
  $file = file_get_contents('ssh2.sftp://' . $srvuser . ':' . $srvpassword . '@' . $srvip . ':22/files/data.txt');
}

Answer 1

Why not use MySQLs encryption options then you can decrypt the password when you run your initial MySQL query?

https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/8.0/en/encryption-functions.html Don't know if its applicable to your application but thats the way i'd go with it?