Why doesn't Amazon enforce a password policy?

["James Strassburg" <JStrassburg () directs com>]

There is a small war going on where I work.  I am trying to get a
password policy enforced for our web applications and certain business
leaders are opposing it.  There are two areas of opposition:

1. Minimum password length of 6 (currently 4, 6 was going to be a
compromise).
2. Expiration of passwords (currently none).

Strength requirements on the password content seems to be ok with them.

These leaders compare our business with Amazon (a bit of a reach but we
go with it for argument's sake) and their main argument for not
enforcing a minimum password length and password expiration is that
Amazon doesn't do it.

How should I go about convincing them that Amazon.com is wrong and the
fact that they haven't had a severe account breach is no reason not to
implement a policy ourselves?  Or, to play devil's advocate with myself,
if I'm wrong, why doesn't Amazon enforce a password policy?

On a side note, the development work for implementing the policy is
already done.  It was done as part of a separate project and just not
turned on until this argument could be resolved so there will be almost
no development cost associated with implementing the policy.

Thanks for your feedback.

James Strassburg


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