Read the docs on the subject of references. whats happening is you're using curly braces, thus assigning a (scalar) anonymous hash. likely what you MEANT to do was assign an actual hash:

# note the parentheses for a list, rather than curly braces for an ano
+nymous structure
%SA_DATA_LOCK_DOWN = (
  'SECALERT_ALERTS_ID'=>0,
  'SECALERT_NUM'=>0,
  'TECH_SPEC_ID'=>0,
  'OS_APP_NAME'=>0,
)
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Update: Fletch makes a good point. references and scalar/list context are both complex and difficult to fully explain, as I perpetually prove :o