Creating password protected gzip files from command line

In order to create a password protected gzip file from the command line we can use openssl (symetric encryption)

To encrypt

tar cz my_folder/ | openssl enc -aes-256-cbc -e > encrypted.tar.gz.enc

To decrypt and untar

openssl aes-256-cbc -d -in encrypted.tar.gz.enc | tar xz