My Googling for writing to tapes with encryption have turned up various results.
Most along the lines of piping tar to openssl similar to:
tar cf - /home | openssl des3 -salt -k "Your-Password-Here"
Some then pipe to dd, while other just redirect to the tape device:
tar cf - /home | openssl des3 -salt -k "Your-Password-Here" | dd of=/dev/nst0
tar cf - /home | openssl des3 -salt -k "Your-Password-Here" > /dev/nst0
Question: is there a particular reason to invoke dd for this, or is it safe to just stream "directly" to the tape with a redirection?