Have been searching on this topic alot lately, but I cant find any good solution, in my opinion.

I have a system where I want to encrypt some data in the database, so it isn't in plain text, but how would you do it properly?
It has to be decrypted to view the data in the system, but how to manage it?

How can I store the keys in the right way? In my current trial, I have a encryption key and an iv, but wouldn't it be wrong to store the encryption key in the config file?

Can't really see how to grasp this the right way and in the same way have it as secure as possible.
Is it just stupid in general?