Issues with Spring Security when deploying Grails app to AWS - grails

Question

I'm relatively new to Grails and very new to AWS Elastic Beanstalk. I have a grails 2.4.4 app. I'm using the spring-security-core:2.0-RC4 plugin to handle login and user roles.
When I run my application in my local development environment, everything is fine. In BootStrap.groovy, I'm able to create users and assign different roles to them. I use the #Secured tag around the controller methods according to my specifications without any issues. The application behaves as expected.
However when I upload and deploy the application to Amazon Elastic Beanstalk (64bit Amazon Linux 2015.03 v1.3.0 running Tomcat 7 Java 7), the users that I have created no longer seem to have the correct roles. On any call to any controller, I'm getting AccessDeniedExceptions.
The exception is below. Does anyone have any direction on how I can troubleshoot this? Is there any extra logging I should add for more information? Does anyone have any insight into what else I need to do to get this to work?
2015-04-28 02:25:29,257 [http-bio-8080-exec-23] ERROR StackTrace - Full Stack Trace:
org.springframework.security.access.AccessDeniedException: Access is denied
at org.springframework.security.access.vote.AbstractAccessDecisionManager.checkAllowIfAllAbstainDecisions(AbstractAccessDecisionManager.java:70)
at grails.plugin.springsecurity.access.vote.AuthenticatedVetoableDecisionManager.decide(AuthenticatedVetoableDecisionManager.java:47)
at org.springframework.security.access.intercept.AbstractSecurityInterceptor.beforeInvocation(AbstractSecurityInterceptor.java:206)
at org.springframework.security.web.access.intercept.FilterSecurityInterceptor.invoke(FilterSecurityInterceptor.java:115)
at org.springframework.security.web.access.intercept.FilterSecurityInterceptor.doFilter(FilterSecurityInterceptor.java:84)
at org.springframework.security.web.FilterChainProxy$VirtualFilterChain.doFilter(FilterChainProxy.java:342)
at org.springframework.security.web.access.ExceptionTranslationFilter.doFilter(ExceptionTranslationFilter.java:113)
at org.springframework.security.web.FilterChainProxy$VirtualFilterChain.doFilter(FilterChainProxy.java:342)
at grails.plugin.springsecurity.web.filter.GrailsAnonymousAuthenticationFilter.doFilter(GrailsAnonymousAuthenticationFilter.java:53)
at org.springframework.security.web.FilterChainProxy$VirtualFilterChain.doFilter(FilterChainProxy.java:342)
at org.springframework.security.web.authentication.rememberme.RememberMeAuthenticationFilter.doFilter(RememberMeAuthenticationFilter.java:146)
at org.springframework.security.web.FilterChainProxy$VirtualFilterChain.doFilter(FilterChainProxy.java:342)
at org.springframework.security.web.servletapi.SecurityContextHolderAwareRequestFilter.doFilter(SecurityContextHolderAwareRequestFilter.java:154)
at org.springframework.security.web.FilterChainProxy$VirtualFilterChain.doFilter(FilterChainProxy.java:342)
at org.springframework.security.web.authentication.AbstractAuthenticationProcessingFilter.doFilter(AbstractAuthenticationProcessingFilter.java:199)
at grails.plugin.springsecurity.web.authentication.RequestHolderAuthenticationFilter.doFilter(RequestHolderAuthenticationFilter.java:49)
at org.springframework.security.web.FilterChainProxy$VirtualFilterChain.doFilter(FilterChainProxy.java:342)
at grails.plugin.springsecurity.web.authentication.logout.MutableLogoutFilter.doFilter(MutableLogoutFilter.java:82)
at org.springframework.security.web.FilterChainProxy$VirtualFilterChain.doFilter(FilterChainProxy.java:342)
at org.springframework.security.web.context.SecurityContextPersistenceFilter.doFilter(SecurityContextPersistenceFilter.java:87)
at org.springframework.security.web.FilterChainProxy$VirtualFilterChain.doFilter(FilterChainProxy.java:342)
at org.springframework.security.web.FilterChainProxy.doFilterInternal(FilterChainProxy.java:192)
at org.springframework.security.web.FilterChainProxy.doFilter(FilterChainProxy.java:160)
at org.springframework.web.filter.DelegatingFilterProxy.invokeDelegate(DelegatingFilterProxy.java:344)
at org.springframework.web.filter.DelegatingFilterProxy.doFilter(DelegatingFilterProxy.java:261)
at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.internalDoFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:241)
at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.doFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:208)
at org.codehaus.groovy.grails.web.servlet.mvc.GrailsWebRequestFilter.doFilterInternal(GrailsWebRequestFilter.java:69)
at org.springframework.web.filter.OncePerRequestFilter.doFilter(OncePerRequestFilter.java:107)
at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.internalDoFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:241)
at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.doFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:208)
at org.codehaus.groovy.grails.web.filters.HiddenHttpMethodFilter.doFilterInternal(HiddenHttpMethodFilter.java:67)
at org.springframework.web.filter.OncePerRequestFilter.doFilter(OncePerRequestFilter.java:107)
at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.internalDoFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:241)
at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.doFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:208)
at org.springframework.web.filter.CharacterEncodingFilter.doFilterInternal(CharacterEncodingFilter.java:88)
at org.springframework.web.filter.OncePerRequestFilter.doFilter(OncePerRequestFilter.java:107)
at org.springframework.web.filter.DelegatingFilterProxy.invokeDelegate(DelegatingFilterProxy.java:344)
at org.springframework.web.filter.DelegatingFilterProxy.doFilter(DelegatingFilterProxy.java:261)
at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.internalDoFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:241)
at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.doFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:208)
at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardWrapperValve.invoke(StandardWrapperValve.java:220)
at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContextValve.invoke(StandardContextValve.java:122)
at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHostValve.invoke(StandardHostValve.java:170)
at org.apache.catalina.valves.ErrorReportValve.invoke(ErrorReportValve.java:103)
at org.apache.catalina.valves.RemoteIpValve.invoke(RemoteIpValve.java:683)
at org.apache.catalina.valves.AccessLogValve.invoke(AccessLogValve.java:950)
at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngineValve.invoke(StandardEngineValve.java:116)
at org.apache.catalina.connector.CoyoteAdapter.service(CoyoteAdapter.java:421)
at org.apache.coyote.http11.AbstractHttp11Processor.process(AbstractHttp11Processor.java:1074)
at org.apache.coyote.AbstractProtocol$AbstractConnectionHandler.process(AbstractProtocol.java:611)
at org.apache.tomcat.util.net.JIoEndpoint$SocketProcessor.run(JIoEndpoint.java:316)
at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1145)
at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:615)
at org.apache.tomcat.util.threads.TaskThread$WrappingRunnable.run(TaskThread.java:61)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:745)
2015-04-28 02:25:29,258 [http-bio-8080-exec-23] ERROR StackTrace - Full Stack Trace:
org.springframework.security.access.AccessDeniedException: Access is denied
at grails.plugin.springsecurity.access.vote.AuthenticatedVetoableDecisionManager.decide(AuthenticatedVetoableDecisionManager.java:47)
at grails.plugin.springsecurity.web.filter.GrailsAnonymousAuthenticationFilter.doFilter(GrailsAnonymousAuthenticationFilter.java:53)
at grails.plugin.springsecurity.web.authentication.RequestHolderAuthenticationFilter.doFilter(RequestHolderAuthenticationFilter.java:49)
at grails.plugin.springsecurity.web.authentication.logout.MutableLogoutFilter.doFilter(MutableLogoutFilter.java:82)
at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1145)
at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:615)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:745)