Securing Web Services - Research

I've been looking for a few hours now for a "quick and easy" solution at securing the Dokeos web services, but I have still to go through a whole lot of technical details. Looking for help (at avoiding so much reading work), I have sent an e-mail to the php-general mailing-list, hoping for an answer. Because this e-mail is the result of considerable search efforts, I'm saving it here.