Methods and systems for improving accuracy, speed, and efficiency of context-aware pattern matching are provided. According to one embodiment, a packet stream is received by a first stage of a CPMP hardware accelerator of a network device. A pre-matching process is performed by the first stage to identify a candidate packet that matches a string or over-flow pattern associated with IPS or ADC rules. A candidate rule is identified based on a correlation of results of the pre-matching process. The candidate packet is tokened to produce matching tokens and corresponding locations. A full-match process is performed on the candidate packet by a second stage of the CPMP hardware accelerator to determine whether it satisfies the candidate rule by performing one or more of (i) context-aware pattern matching, (ii) context-aware string matching and (iii) regular expression matching based on contextual information, the matching tokens and the corresponding locations.