SharePoint 2010 – An error occurred during the “Generate Key” process. Please try again or contact your administrator

Scenario:

In SharePoint 2010, when you try to set up the Secure Store Service Application, one of the first steps is to generate a key. You open up the page under Central Administration > Application Management > Manage Service Applications > Secure Store Service to add a passphrase but see the error message “An error occurred during the “Generate Key” process. Please try again or contact your administrator”.

Looking at the ULS logs you may see this:

“7557 Critical The Secure Store Service application Secure Store Service is not accessible. The full exception text is: User does not have permission to perform the operation.”

Solution:

This could be due to the user account that is logged in to the Central Administration page not having enough permissions to generate the key.

Try using the Farm account.