An encryption platform may identify language characters in database fields and determine which of multiple encoding schemes more efficiently encodes the language characters. The encryption platform may use the selected encoding scheme to encode plaintext into a byte array and then encrypt the byte array into ciphertext. The encryption platform may assign encoding flags to the ciphertext identifying the encoding scheme used for encoding the plaintext. The encryption platform then may use the encoding flag to determine which encoding schemes to use for decoding the data back into plaintext. Using the different encoding schemes allows encrypted data to fit better into database storage structures. The encryption platform also may enable users to select different fields for different selectable objects for encoding and encrypting.