Auditing Standards Board - ASB

The big show for the U.S. accounting industry is the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. They set a lot of the standards for the accounting industry and basically write the rules accountants are supposed to follow as they cook - er, keep - the books of the country's major and minor corporations.
The Auditing Standards Board is a committee within the AICPA. The organization refers to it as "senior committee for auditing, attestation, and quality control." (It is our humble opinion that "attestation" is a grossly underused word. Please use it often, as in "it is my attestation that strawberry-flavored soda is gross.")
Basically, the ASB figures out the best way to conduct a corporate audit and issues guidelines to accountants. Their existence provides a central set of rules, so that everyone follows pretty much the same procedures when they do their auditing thing.