Hello everyone,
Just wanted to let everyone know my 'conclusion'.
It turns out MDK 10 does come w/ an encrypted file system out of the box, but only available if you use the expert mode in the diskdrake tool, then options. I made a partition for /home encrypted, and set up with /etc/modprobe.preload to load up cryptoloop, so during boot up it prompts me for the pass phrase.
I'm quite pleased with this solution, but a word of warning, setting up an encrypted file system has a huge performance hit, it's very obvious and slows all disk i/o down. This may not be acceptable if you really need maximum performance. The obvious solution to this would be to have a very fast system but I don't have the $$$ for that right now, but at least I can sleep well at night.
Thank you kindly,
Ben