Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) Practice Question

The PTES defines seven phases. The very first is Pre-engagement interactions, during which testers and the client agree on scope, objectives, legal and regulatory boundaries, communication channels, scheduling, and reporting expectations. All administrative and contractual details are settled here so that later phases-Intelligence Gathering, Threat Modeling, Vulnerability Analysis, Exploitation, Post-Exploitation, and Reporting-can focus on technical assessment activities. Handling these details in any later phase would violate the PTES workflow and could expose both parties to legal or operational risk. Therefore, the correct choice is the Pre-engagement interactions phase; Intelligence Gathering and Threat Modeling occur after the engagement is formally scoped, while Reporting is the last step.