Thanx for the reply. I have a work around saving (get-credential).password as a secure string file and then converting *that* to text. I was hoping for something less cumbersome (among other things, this requires the service account that is running the scheduled tasks of interacting with a remote SFTP server to have local log-on privs in order to save the secure string, something which has its own security risks) but I can appreciate the need for password security.
Running this under special account to protect the credentials is IMHO the only correct way.