LDAP Thunderbird and security

[Nagy László]

  Hello,

I would like to create an LDAP server, for storing address book 
information for Thunderbird. E-mail clients will be connecting remotely 
with IMAPS (over the internet). Is there a secure way to do this? I know 
that samba can create an LDAP server but it is not secure, is it? I also 
know that I could create a VPN connection, but for my users, this is too 
difficult to setup. :-) Do you know a solution, definitely for FreeBSD, 
that is relatively easy to setup on the client side, and secure?

Thanks,

   Laszlo