Gossels says IT teams must move from periodic to ongoing auditing. He points to firewall checking as an example and says it must be done on a regular basis now to satisfy compliance and other mandates. "This is not just a person looking at logs; it's got to be a process," he says.

For every business rule or auditing point you create, you have to document its business purpose. "You have to know what's happening and why," he says. He also encourages IT teams to assign ownership and time to live to each rule. "That way, over time you don't end up with an accumulation of rules that have no purpose," he says.

In addition to tackling these five chores, IT experts say you should add your own tasks so that your network is the best it can be in 2007.

Sandra Gittlen is a freelance technology editor near Boston. Former events editor and writer at Network World, she developed and hosted the magazine's technology road shows. She is also the former managing editor of Network World's popular networking site, Fusion. She has won several industry awards for her reporting, including the American Society of Business Publication Editors' prestigious Gold Award. She can be reached at sgittlen@charter.net.