The last phase is to cover your tracks. This ensures that you do not leave any traces of your presence on a compromised system. As penetration testers, we would like to be as undetectable as possible on a target's network, not triggering any alerts while we remove any residual traces of the actions performed during the penetration test.

Covering tracks ensures that you don't leave any trace of your presence on the network, as a penetration test is designed to be stealthy and simulate real-world attacks on an organization.