Will be writing a bash script soon... need input

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