this appears to fix the issue of our test cases breaking. I had specified that if the rails env was a dev env, the key would be a certain value. Instead, it has been changed to any env other than prod

config/initializers/key.rb

@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
 if Rails.env.production?
   # Specify env variable/location/etc. to retrieve key from
-elsif Rails.env.development?
+else
   KEY = "123456789101112123456789101112123456789101112"
-end
+end

lib/encryption.rb

@@ -1,3 +1,5 @@
+require './config/initializers/key'
+
 module Encryption
  
   # Added a re-usable encryption routine, shouldn't be an issue!