You’ve implemented a system, and you’ve created the best database structure you can architect. Your system is taking off, and you have hundreds or thousands of clients and many gigabytes of customer data on your server. Things couldn’t be better, right? Then you get a notification that something has gone wrong with your database. Somehow, a malicious entity has gained information about all of your customers because you were storing that information in your database in plain text. This nightmare scenario could be you, if you don’t take at least some minimal measures to prevent it.