The problem is not SecureRandom per se but that /dev/random blocks if it doesn't have enough data. You can use urandom instead but that might not be a good idea if you need cryptographically strong random seeds.
On headless Linux systems you can install the haveged daemon. This keeps /dev/random topped up with enough data so that calls don't have to wait for the required entropy to be generated.
I've done this on a Debian Aws instance and watched SecureRandom generateBytes calls drop from 25 seconds to sub millisecond (Openjdk 1.7 something, can't remember specifically what version).
