Remote Mount a Samba Share
 

Hello, I am setting up a Samba file server at my small office and I have the user permissions set so that the drive requires a username and password for anyone who wants to access the drive. I was wondering if the drive can be accessed remotely (outside of the local network) and if so, how secure it is to do it this way. Thank you.

You can use ssh.
You will need to run sshd on the host running samba service.
Using ssh client (with proper -L and/or -R options) started on the remote host you can see the 127.0.0.1:139 port locally which can be mapped as samba share.

What if I am connecting to the remote samba drive with a computer with windows xp?

Use putty.exe or command line equivalent plink.exe or something similar - I do not remember the name (googling for putty you'll find a tools family).