1. A method for operating a computing device, the method comprising: determining a bit vector for a Bloom filter by (i) determining a set of ternary content addressable memory (TCAM) words to store in a TCAM array, and (ii) performing one or more hash function operations on each of the set of TCAM words; partitioning the TCAM array into a first portion to store the bit vector and a second portion to store the set of TCAM words; storing (i) the bit vector in the first portion of the TCAM array, and (ii) the set of TCAM words in the second portion of the TCAM array; and performing a search of the TCAM array using a search word by (i) performing the one or more hash function operations on the search word to generate a hashed search word, and (iii) determining whether bits at specified positions of the hashed search word match bits at corresponding positions of the bit vector stored in the first portion of the TCAM array before searching the second portion of the TCAM array with the search word.