I will be writing a bash script soon to package home directories and a SQL dump into a zipfile... that's not what I need help with... I need help with encrypting the package at the server level... any ideas?
Maybe you can use 7z it works well for compressing data on linux, i never used it for encryption on linux but as per this article it will work well - http://xmodulo.com/how-to-create-encrypted-zip-file-on-linux.html
that's what I do with my VPS too I encrypt the file using GPG create a key ring encrypt with public key only the private key can decrypt it