Adding SSL to your network communcations in VB is usally an expensive proposition both in terms of time and money. There are a handful of ActiveX controls out there to help you do it most with quite different programming models and some costing up to $1000.
ChilkatSSL is a free open source component based around the OPENSSL libraries that lets you add SSL enabled communications to your projects relativly easily.
The trick is, ChilkatSSL was designed for use in C++ and does not directly support VB...
This code will show you how to get it to work with VB through the use of an external VBized type library.