A bit off topic, but you could have ran a script to change all command status levels to say...200, then lowered the select few you want "certain few" to have access to. But that wouldn't help with the locked status. And the way you went about it is perhaps the nicer way to do this. You could have left it open and dropped some NPCs at all starting locations to attack anyone with a "0" status.
That would keep people off the server, though they would not be happy about it. lol