Slightly OT but here goes.

I'm writing some glue code that will store an encrypted password in a database. I'm looking at different approaches on making all this as safe as possible. Hashing the password (for verification) is not really an option as I will need access to the clear-text (to pass it on to another class). I'll be taking some steps to avoid breaking the encrypted password easily but what about storing the key used to encrypt? In an ideal world, the key to encrypt won't be accessible by anyone but how can I make sure? In some way, the key must be stored somewhere.. Even with a keychain of some kind, I will still need to store the keychain key.

Thoughts?