I would like to protect one key/value pair in my appSettings but not the others using something like I've previously done with the ProtectSection method as seen below.

var configurationSection = config.GetSection("appSettings");
configurationSection.SectionInformation.ProtectSection("DataProtectionConfigurationProvider");

Ideally I would like to do something like the following:

var configurationElement = config.GetSection("appSettings").GetElement("Protected");
configurationElement.ElementInformation.ProtectElement("DataProtectionConfigurationProvider");

Here is the example appSettings I would be operating on:

<configuration>
<appSettings>
    <add key="Unprotected" value="ChangeMeFreely" />
    <add key="Protected" value="########"/>
</appSettings>
</configuration>

I've been searching but haven't found a way to do this. Is this possible?