Colonial Pipeline Company President and CEO Joseph Blount said he is grateful for the FBI's "swift work and professionalism" in responding to a ransomware hack on the pipeline last month.
This comes as US investigators said they have recovered millions of dollars in cryptocurrency paid in ransom to those hackers.
Blount said in a statement that when the pipeline was hacked on May 7, the company "quietly and quickly" contacted FBI field offices in Atlanta and San Francisco as well as prosecutors in California and Washington, DC.
"The Department of Justice and FBI were instrumental in helping us to understand the threat actor and their tactics. Their efforts to hold these criminals accountable and bring them to justice are commendable," Blount said in the statement.
He said the company will continue to be transparent with government agencies as the investigation into the hack continues.
"Our goal is to help our peers in the critical infrastructure space strengthen their cyber defenses and to collaborate across industry so that we can thwart these types of attacks before they happen," the statement said. "Together, through intelligence sharing and lessons learned, we can work to better protect our nation, its people, and our most critical assets.”
Some context: Most companies don't get their ransom recovered.
Blount told the Wall Street Journal in an interview published last month that the company complied with the $4.4 million ransom demand because officials didn't know the extent of the intrusion by hackers and how long it would take to restore operations.