Handle edge cases in encryption

**Feature request**
It would be great to have serialization for types.

**Use case**
Many users need this functionality for production deployments.

**Implementation idea**
Add a new config option `enable_serialization` with default `false`.

No file, test, or entry point is named; start by locating the configuration handling and encryption or serialization implementation. Done means supporting the requested types and the enable_serialization option, whose default is false, with coverage for the stated edge cases.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.