Final answer:
AWS WAF is a service that helps protect web applications by creating custom rules matching various web request criteria, enabling real-time metrics, and logging. It integrates with other AWS services to provide robust security measures for applications hosted on EC2, especially those dealing with sensitive personal information.
Step-by-step explanation:
The AWS Web Application Firewall (AWS WAF) is designed to protect web applications from common web exploits and bots that could affect application availability, compromise security, or consume excessive resources. To protect an application hosted on Amazon EC2 containing sensitive personal information from cyber-attacks, AWS WAF can be utilized to create custom web access control lists (web ACLs). These web ACLs can contain rules that match different web requests based on criteria like IP addresses, HTTP headers, HTTP body, URI strings, SQL injection, and Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) attacks.
By setting up AWS WAF, you can enable real-time metric monitoring and logging capabilities for better visibility into web traffic and potential threats. Moreover, AWS WAF integrates seamlessly with other AWS services like Amazon CloudFront and Application Load Balancer, making it a robust solution for securing your applications on the AWS platform.