M$oft Win95, ODBC and 'crypt-ed' Passwords

Relative newbie here ....

I'm hoping to use PostgreSQL to host the busier tables on a Student
Administation DBMS for three small HE colleges which we're developing at
the moment.  The front-end clients will be M$-Access on Win95/NT4.0
boxes.

ODBC is working fine.  However, I'm none-too-keen on routinely sending
unencrypted passwords over the Internet link between the different sites
at the moment of connection.

One solution is to edit pg_hba.conf to mask host access on IP number and
trust the hosts. Errm, no thanks....

The other solution which works is to send open passwords over the link -
I'd rather not do this.

pg_hba.conf also offers ident server authentication : I know nothing of
this, but does it pertain to the M$ platform?

It also offers crypt / decrypt, which UN&X/Linux could offer, but is
there a M$ en-crypting solution?

Have any others found a way around this problem?  Is there a best
solution?

Regards
Paul