In reply to Francois Vancoppenolle.

Thank you, Francois, for your comment and suggestion. In its current form proc pwencode encodes passwords irrespective of users. Using the encoded passwords instead of “naked” passwords is just a single little step in a grand scheme of data security. Let me reiterate the last paragraph of this blog post:
"PROC PWENCODE is intended to prevent casual, non-malicious viewing of passwords. You should not depend on PROC PWENCODE for all your data security needs; a determined and knowledgeable attacker can decode the encoded passwords. Data should be protected by other security controls such as file system permissions or other access control mechanisms."