The only way to secure that password is to use a datasource and put the password on the datasource side. Anything else will not increase security.

Definitely agreed with that, and in fact we're not even going to be
using that configuration (we'll be using a data source for controlled
password access). This was just a quick thing that I found that many
people might not initially realize, that the bamboo configuration file
has a cleartext database password. It might be preferrable to just
document the security implications on this.

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Thanks for the suggestion.

I'm concerned that doing this would only provide the appearance of security, rather than actual security. Providing a false sense of security can be worse than no security at all.

Bamboo needs the cleartext password to send to the database, so we'd have to use reversible encryption, rather than the kind of one-way hash function that is typically used to protect password files. The decryption algorithm would be freely available, as it would be in the Bamboo code, which is available to anyone. So, anyone with access to the file and basic Java skills would be able to decrypt your password without too much difficulty.

Instead, you should protect your Bamboo installation with appropriate file system permissions. This is prudent in any case, as your Bamboo home directory will also contain sensitive data.