Question: I would like to pass php parameters to an html select options tag. it works fine for an input tag using the value attribute as follows:

```
<input type="text" name="to" value= "<?php echo $parameter ?>" size=10> 

```

I tried to do the same for the select tag, but some reason its not working. Below is the select tag:

```
<select name="clinic">
    <option value="<?php echo $clinicName; ?>" >Baylor</option>
    <option value="<?php echo $clinicName; ?>" >IDCC</option>
</select>  

```

Please note that the parameter would need to passed to an sql statement below these above statements as follows:

```
$clinicName = $_POST['clinic'];
$sql = "select * from patients where clinic = '$clinicName'";

```

Answer: 
What you want is to use HTTPS connection to transfer the password from the user to the server safely. Here is the explanation on how to set up the development environment with IIS for HTTPS - [scottgu link](http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/04/06/tip-trick-enabling-ssl-on-iis7-using-self-signed-certificates.aspx).

HTTPS protocol will handle the encryption and decryption and you just deal with the plain-text password on the server-side.

After that, on the server side, you compute the hash of the password and compare it to the hash stored in the database. Standard ASP.NET SQL membership provider can be used for this.

There is a good explanation from Jeff Atwood on the problems behind storing and hashing passwords - [coding horror link](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/09/youre-probably-storing-passwords-incorrectly.html).
You can encrypt the info you need using `System.Security.Cryptography;`

have a look at the below:

<http://jakkaj.wordpress.com/2007/10/27/encrypting-and-securing-web-service-traffic-without-ssl/>

Bear in mind that anything you do to provide "encryption" that isn't using SSL/TLS is likely to be vulnerable