47. The security appliance of claim 30 wherein the processor is further configured to: in an event the second hash value does not exist in the EC cache table, compute an epsilon closure for the transitions of the one or more NFA states of the NFA graph; compute a third hash value of the epsilon closure; add a new entry into the EC cache table, the new entry mapping a new DFA state to the third hash value of the epsilon closure; and set the new DFA state as the transition DFA state for the character of the alphabet recognized by the NFA graph.
47. The security appliance of claim 30 wherein the processor is further configured to: in an event the second hash value does not exist in the EC cache table, compute an epsilon closure for the transitions of the one or more NFA states of the NFA graph; compute a third hash value of the epsilon closure; add a new entry into the EC cache table, the new entry mapping a new DFA state to the third hash value of the epsilon closure; and set the new DFA state as the transition DFA state for the character of the alphabet recognized by the NFA graph. 48. The security appliance of claim 47 wherein the processor is further configured to: delete the transitions of the one or more NFA states of the NFA graph corresponding to the marked DFA state from the DFA states table.