title: Rails: How can I securely store and reuse passwords
body: <p>So I have an application that can automate execution of remote tasks on other servers. It does this by connecting to the server via SSH and executing the commands through that connection.</p>
  
  <p>The problem I have is how to handle the usernames/passwords for these servers. In most cases I cannot setup cert based authentication for SSH and am stuck using user/pass. While I'd prefer not to store the passwords in the database in plain text, I don't know or understand a way that I can store the passwords encrypted, yet still allow the application access to the password for the purposes of authenticating with the remote server.
  Is this something that is possible?</p>
  
  <p>Thanks for any help!</p>