For additional information regarding the use of the SecurityUtility command, refer to IBM’s website: https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/was-liberty/base?topic=applications-securityutility-command Create a new xml file with file permissions of 660. File owner and group membership is the same as the WebSphere Liberty server user. Add the following line to the new xml file: <variable name="wlp.password.encryption.key" value="mysecret"/> In the above, "mysecret" is the passphrase selected to create a cryptographic hash that represents the password. Save the file to a secured location. Note the path and name, as it will be needed when updating server.xml. Edit the server.xml file and add the following line: <include location="/path/<xml file created>" /> For every unencrypted password in server.xml, run the following SecurityUtility command, which can be found in the Liberty Server install path: SecurityUtility encode --encoding=aes This will prompt the user to enter the plain-text password stored within the server.xml file. The SecurityUtility tool will generate an AES cryptographic hash of the password. Copy and replace the plain-text password with the hashed value. This must be done for every plain-text password in server.xml. Restart the server by entering: server stop <server name> server start <server name>