Wow! I didn't find as many references as you did, Daelmo! Thank you very much! The good news is that I will not have to create our own field level encryption! Since my posting, we had a very lively debate about Oracle vs SQL Sever, features, costs, performance, and we've decided to migrate to SQL Server Enterprise. The great news is that it took me about 8-minutes to configure Transparent Data Encryption on our databases! Wow! Problem solved! Anyway, we are good to go...
Thank you again for your help! Have a great holiday season!
Mike