A signature matching hardware accelerator system comprising one or more hardware accelerator circuits, wherein each of the hardware accelerator circuit utilizes a compressed deterministic finite automata (DFA) comprising a state table representing a database of digital signatures defined by a plurality of states and a plurality of characters, wherein the plurality of states are divided into groups, each group comprising a leader state having a plurality of leader state transitions and one or more member states, each having a plurality of member state transitions is disclosed. The hardware accelerator circuit comprises a memory circuit configured to store the leader state transitions within each group of the compressed DFA, only the member state transitions that are different from the leader state transitions for a respective character within each group of the compressed DFA and a plurality of member transition bitmasks associated respectively with the plurality of member state transitions.