PHP 5 Password Security Protection with hash_hmac
This function represents in PHP 5 the Best Hashing Tool.
It’s enabled by Default from PHP version 5.1+ It dispose of Several Hashing Algorithms and between them: MD5, SHA1, SHA256 and SHA512. For a complete list of Hash Algorithms view Output of the hash_algos() function.
The function take Up to 4 Arguments and only the last is Optional:

The Algorithm in Use
The Data to be Hashed
The Hash Key
which make the generated Hash Unique.
The Key must be Used when Comparing two Hashes.The Hash Output Format
this is Optional. True give a raw Binary and False Hexadecimal chars.
Example:
hash_hmac('sha256', $password, 'xyzhkj', true)