Hardening FC3 webserver against intruders

[Bob Brennan]

I consider myself an advanced novice setting up an FC3 webserver with
http, ftp, and mail services; and try to heed the advice of all here
as far as I can with security.

I have a lot of (unsuccessful) logged attacks of dictionary-login
attempts, obviously automated and from a different dial-up IP address
most days. None are successful since I have very few users and don't
allow unsafe passwords.

My question is - is there anything I can set up to shut down the
repeated attempts from the same (different every day) IP? The obvious
choice would be to deny connections to IP address a.b.c.d after x
number of failed login attempts for y period of time, where I would
set x=3 and y=10 minutes.

Basically I'm looking for toad-proofing.
Is there such a thing and where would I look for it? 

Thanks in advance,
bob