Best way to protect an http service with nginx (possibly encryption?)

[doug livesey]

Hi -- I'm an nginx newbie who is looking to maybe use nginx to provide
security for an HTTP service that previously ran in a trusted environment,
but that now needs to run on the open web.
I was thinking of having nginx listen on an arbitrary port, authenticate
requests to the service on that port, then proxy them on to the service.
I guess my first question is -- is this a correct use of nginx? My research
so far suggests that it is.
And my second question is -- what is the best way to achieve this?
I thought maybe encrypting a username and password as part of the request
(in a cookie?) and using agentzh might be an approach, but I am rather out
of my depth, and would really appreciate any tips or references to docs
that might help we work it all out.
Or if anyone's read a good book that covers this, that would be a very
appreciated recommendation! :)
Thanks very much,
   Doug.
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