Does anyone know how the php mcrypt function compares to md5 and SHA in terms of being secure?

Using md5 and sha with PHP is a pain because they are 1 way functions(I think).

Has anyone used or know anything about the mcrypt? Also, is it secure enough for sensitive data? I understand while using apache, data in transmit requires -ssl to be secure. Everything i've read makes the mcrypt function sound really nice, but i never see/hear it mentioned with things like md5 and sha. (They could be completely different and I wouldnt understand how really. I'm really just refering to the having the md5 or sha sum vs the mcrypt output. )

Any input is appreciated.

They are very different, mcrypt is a library providing an interface to a number of different encryption algorithms. MD5 and SHA-1 are both hashing algorithms which is not the same as encryption.

The basic difference is encryption is two-way, you can hide the data and later you can get it back. This is good for credit card numbers for example as they'll need to be accessible at a later date for processing or verification purposes. Hashing is one-way, once you hash the data you aren't getting it back, ever. This is good for passwords and stuff, one the password is stored you don't need it back ever so hashing is good. If you want to verify that somebody has entered the correct password then just hash their input and compare that, works well.